Hugo Franco 
(A formal description of my professional trajectory is shown in my Curriculum Vitae)
I have graduated in Systems Engineering (Software Engineering, Computer Science) in April 14th, 2000, from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia. My final project, developed in collaboration with Adolfo Reyes Cuevas, was entitled Sistema para la reconstrucción gráfica tridimensional de objetos físicos en computador ("System for the 3D computer reconstruction of physical objects" -- in Spanish), under the direction of Prof. Francisco Meluk (the best educator I've ever met).
In 2001, I started the MSc. in Mathematics there; meanwhile, I was teaching Computer Programming and Digital Image Processing (Department of Systems Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Universidad Nacional de Colombia), but I stopped those activities to initiate my PhD studies in Madrid, Spain, where I joined several projects, such as the Advanced Imaging Measurement Laboratory in the UNED.
Meanwhile I obtained the "Diploma de Estudios Avanzados" (spanish equivalent to the MSc. degree) with the work "Estudio geométrico y térmico de la zona de precalentamiento de una llama que se propaga sobre combustible líquido" ("Geometrical and thermal study of the preheating zone of a flame spreading over liquid fuel" -- in Spanish), sponsored by the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science by the predoctoral fellowship FPI code BES-2004-6681. Additionally, I coursed the specialization program "Master in Biomedical Technology and Instrumentation", leaded by Prof. J. Carlos Antoranz.
After that, I moved to the PhD program in Industrial Fabrication at the Universitary School of Technical Industrial Engineers of the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, where I've just read my PhD Thesis "Contribución Metodológica al Estudio de la Propagación de Llamas sobre Combustibles Líquidos mediante Procesamiento de Vídeo Termográfico" (Methodological Contribution to the Flame Spreanding over liquid fuels by Digital Video Processing -- in Spanish), under the direction of Jesus San Martín Moreno, PhD, and Daniel Rodríguez Pérez, PhD.
My main interests and current works are: digital image and video processing (especially biomedical image analysis), control and interaction with hardware, particularly that devoted to digital image and video acquisition and, more recently, artificial vision techniques applied to the measurement in physical experiments, more specifically, in combustion. Other areas that frequently take my attention are:
- Computer Programming, mainly in C and C++ languages
- Low-level programming of any scientific imaging method I need for my own research work
- 3D modelling and rendering
- Portable GUI design and implementation
- Lately, learning the basics of computational fluid mechanics.
I support the all the open source, free software and public license initiatives (but not with money yet, unfortunately) and, in fact, I'm developing --together with my good partner Daniel Rodríguez Pérez-- a set of GPL modular tools for easy Digital Image Processing, called "SImageGUI", and its foundation, his "SImage" library. All that, implemented in C/C++ and using wxWidgets, an excellent C++ GUI API.