Photograph by Masami Adachi

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A ROAD TAKEN Shipp had an unusual start to his career, signing up for a computer science course at Cambridge University just to play a text-based adventure game called Colossal Cave Adventure. "I needed to get some time on the university mainframe to complete the game, and getting into the course was the easiest way of doing that."

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ONE OF A KIND Shipp is the architect and lead programmer for MessageLabs' e-mail-scanning platform, which he says is unique. "When I started in the field, I knew nothing about antivirus. I came out with a way I thought it should be done and not the way everyone else does it, which is waiting for the virus to come out and catching it afterwards."

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NEW DAY "The reason I love this job is because it's different every single day. When you start in the morning, you don't really know what you'll be doing. It might be a long-term project that you were working on yesterday or some crisis because of new malware that has been introduced."

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TECH HERO The technology MessageLabs uses to catch e-mail viruses was invented by Shipp, who holds 10 patents in the area. "One of my proudest moments is stopping the Love Bug virus, because that was the first time the software worked the way it was meant to."

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MIND AND BODY Shipp is a competitive croquet player. "Croquet is like chess and psychology all wrapped into one." He also competes in sporting events as a triathlete by swimming, biking, and running. "That keeps my body fit, and croquet keeps my mind fit."