additional expertise

Assistance with the topsXtreme project also came from Mark Dalrymple—former technical lead for the AOLServer project—as well as some of the world's foremost experts in database technology.

topsXtreme and UNIX

Our dream list for topsXtreme was comprehensive and forward-looking. UNIX gave us plenty of power to work with, but we needed to have the talent to execute our incredible design goals. So we hired the best orthodontic programming team in the solar system.

  1. Aaron Hillegass

  1. Chris Campbell

  1. Michael Ledford

Aaron has 20-plus years of experience as a software engineer and developer trainer. He draws from his experiences working at Apple Computer, Inc., and NeXT Software, Inc., as the senior trainer and curriculum developer.

Aaron is the author of "Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X." This book, published by Addison-Wesley, is generally regarded as "The Book" from which to learn Cocoa programming. He is also the co-author of "Core Mac OS X and Unix Programming."

Aaron has lectured at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference.

While pursuing a Computer Science degree at Georgia Tech, Chris worked for Cisco Systems as a programmer and system administrator supporting the 12000-series GSR routers. After graduating with high honors, he solved cross-platform system and networking problems while working for an Atlanta-area IT consulting firm. Chris has a knack for identifying and solving the practical problems that developers and their users encounter.

Chris engineered the advanced scheduling features of topsXtreme that include the first ever multiple-doctor support for doctor-time scheduling.

Michael received his bachelor’s degree in Computer Science at the University of Georgia. While there, he worked on designing an advanced graphics computer chip that has a patent pending with the U.S. Patent Office.

Later, Michael joined a small startup internet company,  where he designed a content-management system that brought the company to profitability. Today, it’s one of the top sites on the internet.

During that time, Michael contributed to several open-source projects.

Michael is the technical lead for topsXtreme in the area of Web Services.

Mark Sanchez, D.D.S., rounds out the topsXtreme development team. As the only programmer of orthodontic practice management software that actually uses such a product on a daily basis, Mark knows what you—the practitioner—need. After all, he eats his own dog food.

Mark developed his mathematical and programming skills at Georgia Tech while enrolled in the Ph.D. program in the Physics department.

Mark founded Cogent Design in 1992 and wrote the original version of tops. In 2001, he recruited teamXtreme to bring the orthodontic profession the next generation of information systems.

Mark Sanchez, D.D.S.