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Mark Zbikowski

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Nationality
  
American

Known for
  
His work at Microsoft

Name
  
Mark Zbikowski


Mark Zbikowski newscswashingtoneduwpcontentuploads201104

Born
  
March 21, 1956 (age 68) (
1956-03-21
)

Alma mater
  
Harvard UniversityYale University

Mark "Zibo" Joseph Zbikowski (born March 21, 1956) is a former Microsoft Architect and an early computer hacker. He started working at the company only a few years after its inception, leading efforts in MS-DOS, OS/2, Cairo and Windows NT. In 2006 he was honored for 25 years of service with the company, the third employee to reach this milestone, after Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer. He is currently a technical adviser to several companies and a PhD student at the University of Washington.

Contents

Mark Zbikowski Atlas Informatics

He was the designer of the MS-DOS executable file format, and the headers of that file format start with his initials: the ASCII characters 'MZ' (0x4D, 0x5A).

Mark Zbikowski IDCEE 2013 Official Interview with Mark Zbikowski Senior Technical

Idcee 2013 mark zbikowski technical advisor simulconsult jelastic parallels


Early years

Mark Zbikowski Mark Zbikowski visits the Jelastic offices

Zbikowski was born in Detroit, Michigan, in 1956. While attending The Roeper School (then known as Roeper City And Country School) from 1961 to 1974, he developed an interest in mathematics and computers. His 8th-grade performance in the Michigan Mathematics Prize Competition led to an invitation in an NSF-funded summer program at Oakland University where he became friends with Microsoft's Steve Ballmer and Jeff Sachs.

Mark Zbikowski Happy Farm Business Accelerator Public lecture of Microsoft

Zbikowski pursued Computer Science at Harvard (A.B. 1978) and at Yale (S.M. 1979). He was active in both universities' Gilbert and Sullivan performing groups.

Microsoft

Mark Zbikowski Mark Zbikowski visits the Jelastic offices

Ballmer recruited Zbikowski, who joined Microsoft in 1981. In March 1982 he replaced Tim Paterson as development lead and manager for Microsoft's MS-DOS 2.0, a position he held through DOS 4.0. His first major contributions were the addition of hierarchical directory structure to DOS 2.0 and installable device drivers. From March 1985 until 1991, he was on the architecture team for OS/2, development manager for file systems and device drivers, and technical advisor to Paul Maritz. The breakthrough concept of Installable File System in OS/2 is attributed to him.

Mark Zbikowski Mark Zbikowski From DOS 10 to Windows Vista Behind The Code

Following the demise of the Microsoft/IBM joint development agreement, he was an architect, development manager and key contributor to Cairo, working for Jim Allchin and, later, Anthony Short. This led to Cairo's Object File System and content index efforts. In 1996, as Cairo migrated from being a standalone product to a technology source, Zbikowski worked under Lou Perazzoli on the Windows NT kernel, focusing on performance and size, before becoming architect and development manager for NT file systems in 1998.

In 2001, Zbikowski was a candidate for director of the Harvard Alumni Association.

Zbikowski retired from Microsoft in June 2006.

Due to his interest in education, he became affiliated, in 2007, with the University of Washington as a lecturer in the Computer Science and Engineering department in the College of Engineering.

Mark Zbikowski is affiliated with the following companies:

  • (April 2015) Atlas Informatics as CTO.
  • (June 2013) Jelastic as Senior Technical Advisor.
  • (August 2010) SimulConsult as advisor and CTO.
  • (January 2008) Parallels, Inc. as Senior Technical Advisor.
  • (December 2007) Skytap as Technical Advisor.
  • (2007) InstallFree as Technical Advisor.
  • (October 2006) BlueDot / Faves as Technical Advisor and Investor.
  • References

    Mark Zbikowski Wikipedia


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