athenista Spotlight
In this month’s athenista Spotlight, we get to know Fred Henle, athenahealth Senior Developer.
athenahealth: Can you describe yourself a bit?
Fred Henle: I’m a multi-ethnic geek musician with degrees in computer science and a wife and two kids. I play ultimate (Frisbee) and read lots of science fiction. I also love word games.
aH: What did you do for work prior to athenahealth? And what eventually brought you here?
FH: I was a violinist in the Maryland Symphony Orchestra, and I taught computer science at Mercersburg Academy, a boarding school in rural Pennsylvania. Both were part-time jobs; my wife was a full-time math teacher there. I grew up in New England and we really wanted to move back to the area, so we posted our resumes and drove to Massachusetts during our spring break. It was an exciting week; my wife had interviews and a couple job offers with boarding schools, and I had phone interviews and invitations for on-site interviews at Google, Amazon, and PayPal out on the west coast. At the same time, Josh Purinton at athenahealth gave me a call and I had a couple interviews there. The whole process was great fun. In the five years since leaving grad school I was feeling a little isolated without any computer geek colleagues, and all of a sudden people were calling me up out of the blue to discuss algorithms and write snippets of code! Anyway, my wife accepted a job at Suffield Academy and I took the job at athenahealth.
aH: What do you do in a typical day at work?
FH: Well, it depends. I work from home (a faculty apartment in a dorm at Suffield Academy) except on Tuesdays, when I drive two hours to get to Watertown. Because it’s my day in the office, I tend to have more meetings on Tuesdays than other days. It’s also when we have our company-sponsored math club meeting, where we try to solve tough problems and write up solutions for publication. I always enjoy my face time with colleagues, but I feel quite connected throughout the week. Besides email and the occasional phone call, it’s not uncommon for me to be juggling two or three simultaneous instant messaging conversations with other members of my team. When I’m not in meetings or brainstorming sessions, whether at home or in the office, I’m either coding or doing analysis and testing. I do a little bit of everything related to remittance, but my particular specialty is ERA-electronic remittance advice-and new payer rollout. Of course, when I joined the company I knew nothing about healthcare, let alone the peculiarities of various payers’ implementations of the ANSI X12 835 spec. On my first day at work, I was enthusiastically introduced to everybody as “the new ERA and posting guy” and I was like “Huh? What does that even mean?”
aH: So we hear that you have recently solved quite a difficult math problem that has baffled mathematicians for years. Can you explain that a little?
FH: My father and I found a way to tile the infinite plane with exactly one of every square of integral side-length. That is, we use exactly one 1x1 square, one 2x2 square, one 3x3 square, etc. although we used a very different ordering. The beauty of the problem is that it is so simple to describe, and the proof is one which even high school algebra students can follow. The problem was posed over 30 years ago, but it wasn’t a famous one. In fact, it wasn’t until after we solved it that we learned the history of the problem. My father is a math professor at Smith College, and he started thinking about tiling the plane with squares a couple years ago. He asked me to work on the problem with him, and I did, even though I was pretty sure that it was impossible. It was a great experience to collaborate professionally with my father, and to have our work published in the American Mathematical Monthly. We are continuing to work on related problems.
aH: Sounds like your job can be mentally challenging. What do you do to unwind after work?
FH: When the weather allows, I play ultimate (Frisbee) with athenaHuck. I don’t often get to scrimmage against other teams, but there’s usually practice on Tuesdays when I’m in town. Ultimate has always been my favorite team sport! There’s something almost mystical about the way the disc slices through the air....
When I was in grad school, I used to play chamber music (mainly string quartets) several times a week with friends. I haven’t found a group to play with since we moved back to New England. My kids are almost old enough to start taking lessons, though, so I’ll eventually have at least a string trio!
aH: Where is your favorite travel destination?
FH: I’ve been to the Philippines many times to visit family, although only once since my children were born. My favorite type of travel destination has to be the beach; however, I’m not much of a swimmer. But I could watch the ocean for hours and happily wade in the surf and dig in the sand.
