ISP Instructor Biographies

Arin Ghazarian, Ph.D.

Arin Ghazarian is currently a Senior Lead Machine Learning Engineer at Universal Music Group. Prior to that, he was Principal Data and Machine Learning Engineer at The Walt Disney Studios and Senior Big Data Engineer at 20th Century Fox. He has around two decades of experience in the areas of software engineering, data engineering, machine learning, and data science, specifically in domains like movie/music entertainment and health/medical fields. His PhD research focused on the application of machine learning to ECG analysis and privacy preserving data analysis in cardiology. He brings his years of experience in implementing large scale data analytics and machine learning projects to the classroom, preparing students to excel both in job interviews and in their real-world assignments in industry.

Linda Gruen, Ph.D.

Linda Gruen, Ph.D., has thirty years of teaching experience in public education. Her areas of teaching expertise are second language pedagogies and English composition. She has taught academic writing at UC Irvine and Loyola Marymount University.

Jason Gurtovoy, Ph.D.

Jason Gurtovoy is a Senior Economist and Data Scientist at REPSAS. He has worked in the Financial Services industry for over a decade in banking, investments, real estate, and as a consultant. He has 10+ years of experience teaching graduate and undergraduate courses in finance, economics, and data science. He has taught at UCI since 2017.

Bradley J. Holt, M.P.I.A., CEO of HSI, LLC.

Bradley J. Holt is the CEO of HSI, LLC an international trade and business development firm. He has two decades of international business experience, over 15 years focused on business development in the Asian marketplace. Prior to HSI, he served as the Asia General Manager of RPM’s StonCor Group for seven years, and held management and marketing positions with GN Netcom (a large European communications company), and AT&T. His former clients include Asian and U.S. firms, spanning the fields of manufacturing, distribution, construction and engineering, architecture, design, entertainment, high technology, health care, and consumer products - such as Motorola, AMD, Intel, Budweiser, Lion Nathan, Baxter Healthcare, Glaxo Smith Kline, Roche, 3M, Bechtel, Fluor, L'Oreal, Huafei, Hangzhou TC, and Andrew Telecommunications, etc.

Christian V. Hur, M.S.

Christian V. Hur is an instructor and author who holds a Master of Science in Computer Information Systems with a concentration in Web Application Development from Boston University. His career in web technologies spans over 20 years and he has taught computer programming and web development courses at both the undergraduate and graduate level. In industry, he has built websites and web-based applications using various web technologies throughout his career. In addition to authoring books published by MC Press, he produces online training courses for Lynda.com and Packtpub.com.

Karen Nguyen, M.S.

Karen Nguyen, M.S., PMP, CSM has extensive experience in practicing and teaching project management framework, principles, and theories. Her passion is to deliver value and equip students with a distinctive blend of program management along with leadership skills for real- world experience and application. Karen is a recipient of the UCI Division of Continuing Education Alumni of the Year award, SoCal Most Powerful & Influential Woman of Diversity, and Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society for academic excellence. To help inspire others to achieve their success, Karen also does motivational speaking for organizations and charity events across the U.S.

Saleem M. Yamani, M.S.

Saleem M. Yamani has more than 20 years’ experience in the embedded software engineering field. He has worked in design, and implementation of embedded software programming in various high tech industries, which include Computer, Networking and Hard Disk Drives. He has taught C programming language at Saddleback College for 2 years. Currently he has been teaching Embedded System courses at UCI Division of Continuing Education for past 10 years and is a Firmware Engineering Manager at Western Digital.