Tom Dignan
Data Science and Engineering Executive
In addition to his work in the software industry, Tom Dignan holds expertise in particle physics and has been involved in important research in that field. Dr. Dignan holds a Doctor of Philosophy in Physics from Harvard University and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center early in his career. Tom Dignan began his scientific career at San Francisco State University, graduating magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Science in Physics before going on to Harvard for graduate work. He completed his doctoral education in 1998, presenting a thesis on a study of neutrino oscillation limits conducted with the NOMAD detector at the CERN Super Proton Synchrotron, part of the renowned CERN particle accelerator facility in Switzerland.
Upon graduation, Dr. Dignan started postdoctoral research. Working on the BaBar experiment at Stanford University, Tom Dignan wrote a graphical user interface (GUI) used to test electronics boards employed by the center. He also developed additional software to monitor the system. Through this work, Tom Dignan took part in research that determined the lifetime of the B-meson, a type of subatomic particle consisting of a bottom quark or antiquark and another quark of either the up, down, charm, or strange flavor. This research also brought Dr. Dignan to work at CERN.
Over the past decade, Tom Dignan’s professional activities have focused on software development, with an emphasis on mobile client- and server-side web software. Most recently, Dr. Dignan accepted a senior position with Reputation.com, a company that creates privacy protection technologies for individuals and provides online reputation management tools. Dr. Dignan joined the company in 2009 as the Vice President of Engineering and Research. In 2010, Tom Dignan further specialized at Reputation.com, focusing exclusively on the research component of his position. In this capacity, Dr. Dignan leads all of the company’s technology development initiatives. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.