Greg Bolcer and Rosalva Gallardo Valencia Inducted into the ICS Alumni Hall of Fame

Congratulations to Gregory Alan Bolcer (Ph.D. 1998, advisor Richard N. Taylor), and Rosalva Gallardo Valencia (Ph.D. 2012, advisor Susan Elliott Sim) for being inducted into the ICS Alumni Hall of Fame! The Engineering & ICS Alumni Hall of Fame Celebration was held on February 28 at the Discovery Cube Orange County in Santa Ana, CA. Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences (ICS) Dean Marios Papaefthymiou bestowed the awards to the ICS inductees.

Greg Bolcer is the Chief Data Officer at Bitvore. He has held multiple Chief Technology (CTO) and founder positions at several of Orange County’s most successful startup companies. He holds three degrees: a B.S. and Ph.D. from UCI ICS and an M.S. from USC. Upon graduating with his B.S., Bolcer started his career working for Prof. Richard Taylor as a programmer on the Arcadia research project after being introduced to software engineering through an undergraduate project course taught by Prof. Debra Richardson. He earned his M.S. from USC while being both a full time student at USC and a full time employee at UCI. After a couple of years of research, he joined the ICS Ph.D. program in 1995. He was the project lead for the world’s largest Java project outside of Sun Labs in 1995. While at ICS, he built the world’s very first microservices architecture based on HTTP, WebDAV, and the REST architectural style called Magi (Micro-Apache Generic Interface) by developing a peer-to-peer version of the Apache HTTP open source project.

Bolcer founded three startup companies, worked for three others including his current company, and has been an advisor to at least a dozen others. Throughout the course of his career, he has authored close to two dozen software patents and broken a lot of new ground creating innovative, new software products. He also is an active participant in OC’s startup community and regularly conducts due diligence for investors and reviews for early stage entrepreneurs. He’s been a judge for ICS’s student startup contests and a visiting lecturer both at UCI and USC from time to time.

“I only think that I’m where I am in my career because I am standing of the shoulders of others,” said Bolcer. “ICS is truly a special place. There are amazing people doing amazing stuff that is well known all over the world. While other universities may have greater name recognition, UCI in general and Information and Computer Sciences specifically have been quietly doing the things that truly make a difference in people’s lives. ICS has become students’ top choice.”

Rosalva Gallardo Valencia is a Senior Program Manager at Google in Silicon Valley, where she leads global programs to advocate for both Strategic 3rd Party Software Developers and Google Developer Products. Before joining Google, she worked as an Engineering Manager at Intel Corporation in Silicon Valley leading global software quality programs. Gallardo Valencia started her career as a Software Engineer in the IT Department at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru. Later, she worked at Novatronic as an Engineering Manager leading teams creating software for banks and telecoms.

Gallardo Valencia is committed to empowering Women and Latin@s to be leaders in the field of computing. She led the Google.org collaboration with Laboratoria which is transforming tech education for women in Latin America. She was selected to represent Google in the Technolochicas TV campaign to inspire Latinas to pursue careers in Technology. She is the co-founder of PeruSV.org a non-profit organization with the mission of closing the technology gap between Peru and Silicon Valley. She is also the co-founder of Techsuyo, the annual conference that brings together Peruvian Tech Professionals in the US and Peru. Techsuyo has been held successfully at Stanford, MIT, and UC Berkeley. In 2019, Techsuyo was held in Peru and brought together 300+ professionals and inspired 700+ students to pursue careers in Technology. Gallardo Valencia, in collaboration with the UCI Foundation, created the Rosalva Gallardo Valencia Graduate Award to celebrate her Latino heritage and support Ph.D. students at UCI.

Gallardo Valencia reflected on the induction: “I am honored and very grateful to have been inducted into the ICS Hall of Fame and to have been the ICS featured speaker during the Celebration! The HoF Celebration was very special because people who supported me the most during my UCI journey and people who now I support at UCI were with me, sharing this moment. My mother, sister, and niece came from Peru and my Ph.D. advisor Susan Sim came from Canada for the Celebration. Also, Adriana Meza Soria, the first recipient of the Gallardo Valencia Fellowship, was in the audience. It was an unforgettable event where I connected with familiar and new UCI alumni.”

Photos from the induction ceremony are available.