Dan Manolescu (B.Comm ‘05, RHCE ‘08) received his Bachelor of Commerce in I.T. Management from Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada. He is currently working as a Level 4 I.T. Analyst in support of advanced research conducted by the Canada Excellence Research Chair (CERC) in Hybrid Powertrain and McMaster Institute for Automotive Research and Technology (MacAUTO) at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada. His specialization lies in system integration, administration and management in heterogeneous networks. Dan is a member of and attends technical conferences for the Hamilton Linux Usergroup, USENIX, the Linux Foundation and The League of Professional System Administrators.

Full Profile

Picture this: Padua, Italy, 1970, a young Romanian couple doing their graduate studies in Material Sciences & Engineering are facing expiring bursaries and must return to the draconian communist dictatorship at the time, in Romania. Countless prayers to St. Anthony di Padua to find a better life were answered with offers from McMaster University to continue their studies in Canada. With no knowledge of English or money to their names, a real possibility of never seeing their families again, and persecution if caught by Romanian Secret Police, Dan Sr. and Angela Manolescu defected to Canada.

Thanks to McMaster University, Canada, and the sacrifices his parents made, Dan Anthony Manolescu was able to live a free life. Though he did not follow in his parents’ footsteps of studying at McMaster, in 2005 he graduated from Ryerson University with a Bachelor of Commerce in Information Technology Management majoring in System Development and Implementation. Upon completion of his degree, Dan took a position as the IT Coordinator at the HS Spring Group (a parts manufacturer in the automotive industry) and received a promotion to IT Manager of Canadian Operations, soon after.

After leaving the HS Spring Group in 2008, Dan founded The Tek9 Network Inc. while achieving the coveted Red Hat Certified Engineer status in the United States (RHCE in Canada). After a couple of years of consulting for the Tek9 Network at private and public institutions as a Systems Administrator, Dan joined McMaster University. As the Research Computing Specialist in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, he was responsible for providing a full range of IT services in support of advanced research conducted by 300 research engineers. Areas of specialty included Linux/Unix, clustering, high performance computing, and system management, administration, and integration.

In his spare time, Dan enjoys traveling, attending technical conferences, film and cultural festivals, and international sporting events. Some of his hobbies include meditation, squash, fencing, hiking, biking, and kayaking. Dan is a proud Hamiltonian, Ontarian, Canadian, Romanian, and Greco-Orthodox Christian. He is a member of the Hamilton Linux Users Group, USENIX, The Linux Foundation, and The League of Professional System Administrators.

Now as the Information Technology Lead at MacAUTO, Dan is architecting the IT services for research conducted by the Canada Excellence Research Chair (CERC) in Hybrid Powertrain Program.