John Karahalis is a third year Computer Science major at RIT. John is the lead developer of Innovation News and is currently participating in the imagination and early development of the future of the platform.

John began work on Innovation News in March of 2008. At this time, he was hired to assist in the initial development of Innovation News for use at RIT's first annual Imagine RIT innovation festival.

Since that time, John has been heavily involved in the development, maintenance, and deployment of the system. He has released the Innovation News software to the open-source community, has served as the lead web developer for all iterations of the paper, and was very active in improving the system for use at the second annual Imagine RIT festival.

John is a strong proponent of free and open source software, and credits the open-source nature of HTML for sparking his interest in software development. While not technically a Stallmanite, John often finds himself treading dangerously down that path.

In his coming years with the Open Publishing Lab John hopes to further his development skills, confront interesting problems, and deliver quality software.

John can be contacted at john.karahalis [at] rit [dot] edu