CHÁD (SHOD) DARBY is an author, instructor, and speaker in the Java development world. As a recognized authority on Java applications and architectures, he has presented technical sessions at software development conferences worldwide (in the U.S., U.K., India, Italy, Russia, Netherlands, Singapore, Japan, and Australia). In his 20 years as a professional software architect, he's had the opportunity to work for Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Merck, Boeing, Red Hat, and a handful of startup companies.

Chád is a contributing author to several Java books, including Professional Java E-Commerce (Wrox Press), Beginning Java Networking (Wrox Press), and XML and Web Services Unleashed (Sams Publishing). Chád has Java certifications from Oracle and IBM. He holds a B.S. in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University.