Scott Kurowski's Home Page

Welcome to my home page!  I am an entrepreneurial software systems technologist and engineering executive for digital infrastructures, applications, services and related products.  The average mid-stage startup corporate valuation and initial capital investment in which I am the leading technical resource is about $100 million and $25 million USD, respectively.

I am currently Chief Technology Officer and VP of Engineering at Sorteo Games and have ongoing independent experimental work in various kinds of cool, fun and perhaps lucrative research when not flying as a private pilot.  I am also chief executive of Plus One Flyers and Rassavong Scholarship Foundation, Executive VP of Mersenne Research, and a board director of all three organizations.

I am humbled and surprised with the amount of popular interest in my work!  Thanks to all of you who gently pinged me to get this site rolling.

News & what's cool

• 05/01/2011 - Fourth Where's George bill received as change today
• 02/16/2011 - IBM's Watson wins the Jeopardy! Challenge, $1M winnings fund The Scripps Research Institute's drug research grid built in 2000 by myself, Garrett Morris and the Entropia team, now operated under IBM's World Community Grid.
• 07/16/2010 - Reappointed fourth-term President of Plus One Flyers, Inc., and 6th year on the board of directors.
• 05/19/2010 - The universe is less symmetrical in nature than predicted - and the bottom quark is afoot, as learned by Fermilab!
• 10/14/2009 - The Electronic Frontier Foundation awards us the $100,000 Cooperative Computing Award for the discovery of Mersenne prime M45, 2^43,112,609-1 !
                      This same discovery earned Time Magazine's 29th Best Invention of 2008 (UCLA is a participant in GIMPS PrimeNet).
• 08/25/2009 - The Fibonacci Quarterly mathematics journal publishes our research paper, On the Discovery of the 45th and 46th Known Mersenne Primes.
• 08/25/2009 - My physics derivation of the mass of 1 bit of information at 150°F, m_b = 3.61x10^-35 g.
• 08/24/2009 - Rassavong Scholarship Foundation awards 2009 scholarship to U.C. Berkeley student from San Diego, CA.
• 05/05/2009 - Return to Desert Flight Camp at L25 on the south rim of the western Grand Canyon.
• 04/12/2009 - GIMPS participant Odd Magnar Strindmo in Norway discovers Mersenne prime M47, 2^42,643,801 - 1 on PrimeNet !
• 04/10/2009 - Mersenne Research (GIMPS) featured on National Public Radio (NPR)
• 02/13/2009 - How to play to innovate and succeed - book recommendation: Innovation Games by Luke Hohmann.
• 02/21/2009 - Third Where's George bill received as change today
• 11/03/2008 - Our 45th Mersenne Prime Earns #29 on Time's Top 50 Best Inventions of 2008 (UCLA runs part of GIMPS PrimeNet)
• 11/02/2008 - Sorteo Games launches Cachito Movil SMS Loteria Nacional, the national lottery of Mexico, on cell phones, one of our products.
• 09/16/2008 - GIMPS PrimeNet discovers TWO new Mersenne primes for EFF's $100,000 cooperative computing award
• 08/15/2008 - Rassavong Scholarship Foundation awards 2008 scholarship to Georgetown University student from Valley Center, CA.
• 05/09/2008 - Our 2008 Desert Flight Camp at L25 on the south rim of the western Grand Canyon.
• 03/30/2008 - Puzzle Cubes - my software, analysis and solutions to for these popular and difficult puzzle cubes:
  • 03/30/2008 Tetris Cube Solved - ALL 9,839 solutions
  • 01/16/2009 Big Brother Cube Solved - ALL 14,177 solutions
  • 05/01/2008 Bedlam / Crazee Cube Solved - ALL 19,186 solutions
  • 05/02/2008 Steinhaus Cube Solved - 2 solutions
  • 05/02/2008 Soma Cube Solved - ALL 480 Solutions
  • 02/05/2009 Super IQ Cube Solved - 1 solution
• 03/15/2008 - Digital Orchid launches Melate Movil, the 2nd national lottery of Mexico, exclusively available on Telcel mobile phones, one of our products.
• 05/01/2007 - Rent my Cirrus SR22 airplane in San Diego, California, through Plus One Flyers
• 04/02/2007 - 10th anniversary of the operational PrimeNet volunteer distributed supercomputing grid!
• 12/15/2006 - GPS Measurement of Aircraft Glide Ratio
• News & what's cool archive
  

Some work & research projects I'm enjoying

• Large-scale semidefinite programming (SDP) (combinatorial and polynomial convex conic optimizations with intersecting affine spaces).
• Real estate research through East Meets West Distinctive Properties and peer web sites.
• Giving startup business planning and entrepreneurship guest talks at the University of California, San Diego.
• Managing Plus One Flyers, Inc., with 900+ pilots and a superb safety record easily the best flying club in southern California! [2005-present]
• Managing Mersenne Research, Inc., a 501(c)(3) math and computer science research project operating the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS) [1997-present].
• Managing Rassavong Scholarship Foundation, a 501(c)(3) public benefit charity granting scholarships to qualifying San Diego County students to promote professional, academic or artistic achievement. [2004-present]
• Nuclear physics process patent - look for details after filing! [2006-present]
• "Darwin Engines" - self-programming software development systems
• SJK Research online product store
• some high-tech business ideas - maybe they're crazy - maybe not ...

Archive of some things I've built or done

• Companies started or on the "ground floor" executive team:
  • Sorteo Games - Wireless infrastructure technologies, solutions and mathematical algorithms for large-scale lotteries and gaming [2008-present]
  • Digital Orchid - Name-branded (cellular) mobile media distribution for sports (NASCAR, ESPN, MLB, NHL, Cruz Azul), entertainment (models & celebrities) and affinity communities [2002-2008]
  • DiscoverCast - Real-time peer-to-peer device and mobile networking software platform (acquired by Digital Orchid) [2001-2002]
  • Entropia - $30 million venture-funded grid computing software company I founded in my home [1996-2001]
• Distributed supercomputing grids
  • PrimeNet, the longest-running all-volunteer research grid in the world, running 24x7 at 42 teraflops on about 100,000 computers worldwide for the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS), discovered the ten largest known prime numbers and is the leading contender for the EFF $100,000 prime research cooperative computing prize [1997-present]
  • Scripps Research Institute's drug research grid, now operated under IBM's World Community Grid as part of the National Institute of Health (NIH), having about 45,000 computers [2000-2002].
  • SaferMarkets University of Rochester Simon school of business stock volatility research grid (now concluded) [2000-2001].
• Research & independent studies projects
  • Experimental software research in various downloadable source code projects [1995-2002]
  • Grid-enabled Autodock molecular docking GA software for The Scripps Research Institute [2000]
  • Mathematically-derived printable template pattern to build a parabolic solar reflector (for son's school project) [1999]
  • Genetic Algorithm Solution Spectra of Riemann Zeta Function Roots [1997]
  • Nuclear & particle physics 0.5ns muon timestamp system [1997]
  • Kanerva sparse distributed memory (AI memory indexing) [1995]
  • Laplace orbit determination (celestial mechanics) [1995]
  • Solar Almanac using periodic Fourier elements (epoch 2000 +/- 300 years) [1995]
  • Calculate an earthquake epicenter (on a plane) from three seismic station reports [~1980,2010].
• Online Services
  • Internet Notary Service digital documents witness [1996-present]
  • Certificate Authority for S-MIME and HTTP SSL servers, registered with the Cambridge Global Trust [1996-1999]
  • Infocom's 1983 Enchanter text adventure game as a free web service (initially named Zork IV) [1997]
  • Infocom's 1984 Sorcerer text adventure game as a free web service (sequel to Enchanter) [1997]
• Various Cool Stuff
  • Software patents w/images & Aurigin, others pending [1999,2001,present]
  • Named in the Millennium Edition of the Guinness Book of World Records for largest known prime number [2000]
  • A Breakfast with Knuth, Stanford Professor Emeritus of The Art of Computer Programming (TAOCP) [1999]
  • Unisys CTOS SuperZip data compression utilities - pre-WinZip [1994]
  • Bausch & Lomb Science Medalist [1982]

Some great teams I've had the privilege & fun to work with

• Aurigin Systems / Smartpatents 1998-1999
• Convergent Technologies / Unisys / Unisys Government Systems 1990-1996
• Digital Orchid 2002-present
• Discovercast 2001-2002 (acquired by Digital Orchid)
• Entropia 1997-2001
• Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search 1996-present
• Tandem Nonstop Software & Advanced Technology Groups (now part of HP) 1996-1998
• U.S. Coast Guard 1985-1992

Hall of Fame for folks willing to let me acknowledge them


Personal interest items and info

Contact me at

Last updated May 2011