SMITH, Dr Russell Leigh

SMITH, Dr Russell Leigh

Male 1972 -  (52 years)


Personal Information    |    Media    |    Notes    |    Sources    |    All

  • Name SMITH, Russell Leigh 
    Title Dr 
    Nickname Russ 
    Birth 19 Jul 1972  Wellington Find all individuals with events at this location  [1, 2
    Gender Male 
    Occupation 15 Aug 2003 
    Software engineer. 
    Reference Number 25 
    Residence 15 Aug 2003 
    • Lives in California, at Mountain View, near San Francisco.
    Person ID I25  Main Tree | Descendant of Angus Matheson , Descendent of Vern Smith, The Walkley Family, Ward and Walkley
    Last Modified 9 Mar 2025 

    Father SMITH, Vernon Leigh,   b. 24 Jul 1940, Auckland Find all individuals with events at this location (Age 84 years) 
    Mother WARD, Sally Lowe,   b. 15 Mar 1944, Auckland Find all individuals with events at this location (Age 81 years) 
    Marriage 17 Apr 1971  Orewa, North Auckland Find all individuals with events at this location 
    Family ID F17  Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

    Family 1 CHOU, Novey Yu-Lan,   b. 26 Aug 1974, Taipei Find all individuals with events at this location (Age 50 years) 
    Marriage 02 Jun 2002  Half Moon Bay, California, United States of America Find all individuals with events at this location 
    • Half Moon Bay, California
    Divorce 2022 
    Married 5 Mar 2025  San Francisco City Hall Events Find all individuals with events at this location 
    • Russell Smith and Jackie Huang were married on 5th March at San Francisco City Hall
    Children 
     1. SMITH, Calvin Kai-Wen,   b. 22 Jan 2004, El Camino Hospital, Mountain View, USA Find all individuals with events at this location (Age 21 years)
     2. SMITH, Owen Kai-Shiang,   b. 16 Feb 2007, Santa Clara, Santa Clara, USA Find all individuals with events at this location (Age 18 years)
    Family ID F18  Group Sheet  |  Family Chart
    Last Modified 14 Dec 2023 

    Family 2 HUANG, Jackie,   b. 22 Jan 1984, China Find all individuals with events at this location (Age 41 years) 
    Marriage 5 Mar 2025  San Francisco City Hall Find all individuals with events at this location 
    Family ID F1210  Group Sheet  |  Family Chart
    Last Modified 25 Mar 2025 

  • Documents
    Russell
    Russell
    Russell

  • Notes 
    • I was born in Wellington on July 19, 1972. I grew up in Massey, West Auckland, where I attended Royal Road Primary School and then Massey High School. After that I followed my father's footsteps into the electrical engineering program at the University of Auckland. After I obtained a Bachelor of Engineering in early 1994 I went into the electrical engineering post-graduate program, where I worked on "intelligent" motion control problems for walking robots (see http://q12.org/phd.html ). I graduated with a PhD in 1998.
      As the New Zealand job market did not have much need for my specialized skills, I moved to Montreal, Canada, where I worked for a start-up company called Lateral Logic that made simulators for industrial machines. Within a year Lateral Logic was bought by Math Engine, a UK start-up specializing in physics engine software for computer games. In late 1999 I met my wife Novey, who was living in Manchester, New Hampshire at the time. Over the next six months I spent almost every weekend taking the bus or driving a rental car from Montreal down to New Hampshire and back, occasionally driving through blizzard conditions. In September 2000 I officially immigrated to the US, becoming the one-man New Hampshire branch of Math Engine. Math Engine folded soon after (another dot com victim). To keep up my visa status in the US I took a job with Ubicom in California, where a grad-school friend of mine was working. So in May 2001, Novey quit her job at Compaq, we packed everything we had into a U-haul trailer and drove across the U.S. in ten days. This is one of our most memorable trips. We settled in Mountain View, California. In June of 2002 we were married at Half Moon Bay, on the chilly California coast.
      In 2004 our first son was born, Calvin Kai-Wen Smith. In mid 2006 I left Ubicom for Google, where I now work on the Street View feature of Google Maps. In 2007 our second son was born, Owen, Kai-Shiang Smith.
      In early 2009, after years of immigration paperwork, I finally became a U.S. citizen (though I get to keep my Kiwi citizenship too!).
      Russ Smith
      http://www.q12.org/

  • Sources 
    1. [S10] Smith, Vernon.

    2. [S226] Smith, Gertie, Birthday book.