About the author

My name is Yuri Panchul.

On the photo picture below you can see (left to right):

* my friend Shen Yinchun 沈荫椿, a Chinese-American working on a new book about camellias

* me (Yuri Panchul), a Ukrainian-American engineer, entrepreneur and horticulturalist

* my wife Sayaka, a Japanese-American artist

* our children

I have a collection of more than 100 sasanquas and other camellia plants, not including my own seedlings. I grow my plants on my backyard in Sunnyvale, California, mostly in containers. I am a member of The International Camellia Society, American Camellia Society, San Francisco Peninsula Camellia Society and The Camellia Society of Santa Clara County.

In addition to this site I write about sasanquas and other plants in paper publications. My articles were published in leading Russian horticulture magazines ‘Tsvetovodstvo’ (“Цветоводство”, “Ornamental Horticulture”) and “V Mire Rasteniy” (“В Мире Растений”, “The World of Plants”). I also helped a journalist Lili Singer from Los Angeles Times to write an article about sasanquas, that was published on November 30, 2006. In addition, my photo picture of sasanqua ‘Yuletide’ was published on January 10, 2007 in San Francisco Chronicle.

My main occupation is engineering. I got some publicity in the area of Electronic Design Automation (EDA) as a CTO (Chief Technology Officer) of a Silicon Valley company called C Level Design, that I founded back in 1996 and that was sold to Synopsys in 2001. Right now I work in MIPS Technologies (2009) – a company founded by Stanford President John Hennessy. Since 1980s MIPS has been a pioneer in modern processor design – MIPS processors were used in Silicon Graphics computers, Sony TV sets, video game consoles, photo cameras, laser printers and numerous other devices.

Here is a photo picture of my garden, made in November 2007:

You can read more about me on my personal site http://panchul.com