Welcome to the contributors page for the MATLAB Graphics and App Building Blog. Here, we proudly showcase the talented individuals who have shared their expertise and perspectives in our blog, enriching our content with their specialized knowledge and industry insights.

The diverse backgrounds of our contributors bring our readers a variety of perspectives, problem-solving approaches, coding styles, and other individual nuances that we hope will resonate with our diverse group of readers, fostering a sense of identification and community engagement.

As our blog continues to grow, we will continually update this page to express our gratitude to the contributors who have been instrumental in shaping the discourse on graphics and app building.

If you’re a first-time visitor, we encourage you to check out our introductory article to learn more about the vision and scope of our blog.

Our Graphically Gifted & App-solutely Amazing Contributors

Adam Danz View Adam’s articles	Adam Danz is a software engineer on the MATLAB Charting Team and host of the MATLAB Graphics and App Building blog. His daily use of MATLAB began in a neurophysiology lab focusing on vision science during his graduate studies, where he not only developed a passion for science, math, and data analytics but also became an active participant in the MATLAB Central Community. His engagement with and advocacy for fellow MATLAB users was boosted after being appointed to the MathWorks Community Advisory Board in 2020.  In 2022, Adam eagerly joined the Graphics and Charting team at MathWorks. In addition to his technical pursuits, Adam enjoys his regular visits to Eastern Europe, a region he briefly called home before his graduate studies, where he enjoys being immersed in the local cultures and landscapes.
Abby Skofield View Abby’s articles	Abby is a software engineer on the MATLAB Charting Team. Abby started her MathWorks career in the User Experience (UX) group, supporting the graphics team in the lead up to the release of the new graphics system in R2014b. Some of us might remember those changes 😉. In the UX group, Abby had the opportunity to work with hundreds of customers to learn about how they used MATLAB Graphics, their wish lists, and she got to dig in to the technical details with her engineering colleagues. She switched roles in 2020 to join their ranks as a software engineer, where she continues to enjoy learning about customer use cases while also getting hands-on time in the code.
Afiq Azaibi View Afiq’s articles	Afiq’s programming journey started in his freshmen year at college with MATLAB, a language his peers dubbed at the time “a fancy calculator.” This exposure to programming laid the groundwork for his career at MathWorks when he joined in 2016 as part of the Engineering Development Group (EDG). His time in EDG was marked by valuable customer interactions, which enriched his understanding of user requirements. In 2018, he transitioned to becoming a developer on the Charting Team. He’s made several contributions, but his most popular tool for MATLAB users has been xline and yline, which create ConstantLine objects (R2018b). He resides as the steward of Legend and is constantly exploring enhancements to improve its performance and user experience.
Baldvin Einarsson View Baldvin’s articles	Baldvin is a software engineer in the Statistics and Machine Learning Toolbox. His journey with MATLAB began in the early 2000s during his college years in Iceland, where he first discovered his passion for scientific computing and visualizations. Before joining MathWorks, Baldvin’s mathematical research interests included modeling growth and migration patterns of pelagic fish, coupled oscillators and dynamical systems, and biofilm growth. Baldvin then spent nearly 9 years at a natural catastrophe risk modeling firm in Boston before his dream of joining MathWorks became true in 2022. Outside of work, Baldvin enjoys fly tying, knitting, woodworking, and playing the piano.
Benjamin Kraus View Benjamin’s articles	Ben has been a Software Engineer on the MATLAB Graphics and Charting Team since 2015. Although his first exposure to MATLAB was in 2000 as an undergraduate studying Biological Engineering and Computer Science at Cornell University, he really grew to love MATLAB while completing his PhD in Biomedical Engineering at Boston University. Throughout graduate school Ben used MATLAB nearly every day for nearly every aspect of his research: from running his experimental setup, collecting data, and analyzing data, to producing figures for his thesis and research papers. Ben joined MathWorks in 2013 and spent a little over a year in the Engineering Development Group at MathWorks before joining the Graphics and Charting Team. When he isn’t at a computer, Ben enjoys biking, rowing, and sailing, and is a member of The Fast and the Fouriers running club at MathWorks.
Brian Knolhoff View Brian’s articles	Brian is a software engineer on the Figure Infrastructure and Services team at MathWorks.  After first encountering MATLAB while calibrating radar systems, he now enjoys building and modernizing the tools that support engineers and scientists in their daily work.  Outside of the office, Brian enjoys playing guitar, hockey, and board games, and maintains a collection of vintage and modern pinball machines.
Chris Portal View Chris’ articles	Chris Portal serves as director of engineering for the MATLAB graphics and app building teams, delivering data visualizations, app building capabilities, and data exploration tools for MATLAB. Chris joined MathWorks in 1997 as a developer and has been involved in the development and evolution of several MathWorks products including MATLAB, Simulink, Partial Differential Equation Toolbox, and version 1.0 of Data Acquisition Toolbox, Instrument Control Toolbox, and Image Acquisition Toolbox in the test and measurement product area.
Dinesh Kavalakuntla View Dinesh’s articles	Dinesh is a Software Engineer on the MATLAB App Designer team at MathWorks. He began his journey with MathWorks in 2019, bringing with him a strong background in front-end development. Leveraging his expertise, Dinesh has made enhancements to the App Designer Environment, utilizing his front-end skills to optimize user experience. His contributions extend to authoring Custom UI Components and Simulink apps in App Designer, further enriching its functionality. With a keen eye for detail and a passion for creating intuitive user interfaces, Dinesh contributes to enhancing the App Designer experience for MATLAB users.
Eric Ludlam View Eric’s articles	Eric Ludlam is the development manager of MATLAB’s Charting team. Eric has a whopping 27 years of experience working in MATLAB Graphics, starting in MATLAB 5.0! Eric is renowned within MathWorks for his love of trebuchets, catapults and Punkin Chunkin. His exceptional graphics demos have appeared in MathWorks’ Community blog, MATLAB blog, and in MATLAB social media feeds.
Gianluca Carnielli View Gianluca’s articles	Gianluca is an application engineer at MathWorks based in Italy. While he supports MATLAB users in the development of applications in all sorts of engineering and science industries, his hardcore passion for MATLAB lies in the graphics. During his PhD in Space Physics at Imperial College London, he has enjoyed creating artistic illustrations and animations using MATLAB to showcase the science he was working on, and as an application engineer, he is using his artistic vein to help customers develop applications with captivating graphical user interfaces.
Jasmine Poppick View Jasmine’s articles	Jasmine works in documentation at MathWorks, both as a writer for the App Building area and as a Senior Team Lead for the Math area. Her first introduction to MATLAB was when she taught a differential equations course during her graduate studies in math. At MathWorks, she has written the documentation for many big app building features, such as custom UI components and Simulink apps in App Designer. When she isn’t writing new examples about how to build apps, she loves playing games, gardening, and spending time with her dog, Mochi.
Ken Deeley View Ken’s articles	Ken is an application engineer in Cambridge, UK, supporting MathWorks users with their technical computing projects. Ken joined the MathWorks customer training team in 2011 after research work in mathematics with applications to motion planning for autonomous guided vehicle (AGV) robotics. Ken specializes in software development, machine learning, and financial applications, with a particular focus on graphics and app development. He enjoys training MathWorks users on best practices, working with customers on consulting projects, and capturing common customer workflows and requirements to inform future MathWorks development activities.
Kristen Amaddio View Kristen’s articles	Kristen Amaddio is the Senior Team Lead for the MATLAB UI Components team. She first joined MathWorks as part of the Engineering Development Group (EDG) in 2016, which gave her valuable exposure to customer workflows in the MATLAB Graphics and App Building space. Since becoming a developer in 2018, Kristen has made many contributions to the UI components area, including enhancements to the uitable, uicontextmenu, and uigridlayout. She has also made improvements to component interactions and accessibility. When she is not developing software, Kristen enjoys hiking and playing piano.
Robert Philbrick View Robert’s articles	Robert Philbrick is a principal engineer responsible for new interactive App Designer workflows. He joined MathWorks in 2012 and has made many contributions to the App Building area, including developing the GUIDE to App Designer Migration Tool for MATLAB, improving the App Designer onboarding experience, enabling App Designer in MATLAB Online, adding support for custom UI component authoring in App Designer, and making it easier to build Simulink apps interactively with App Designer. Outside of software development, Robert enjoys mountain biking, skiing, reading, and playing board games.
Travis Roderick View Travis’ articles	Travis joined MathWorks in 2013, bringing experience from previous roles in software development across the healthcare, finance, and storage network industries. He earned a BA in Computer Science in 2001, followed by a master’s degree where he explored the intersection of technology and creativity—using probabilistic genetic algorithms to generate music for his thesis. Although he enjoys the challenges of coding, Travis is most passionate about solving user experience problems. He’s particularly interested in uncovering the gap between how software is designed to be used and how people actually use it—insights that often lead to meaningful improvements. At GAAB (Graphics and App Building), he finds the ideal environment to explore these dynamics and help shape better user experiences for all.