David Cofer

OBJECTIVE: To attend a graduate school where I can obtain the knowledge and hands on experience needed to integrate biological concepts like evolution, development, and neurology with software and hardware to build robotic systems capable of producing useful, autonomous behavior.

EDUCATION: Georgia State University. Atlanta, Ga.

BS in biology. Graduation Summer 2004. GPA =  3.8 of 4.0.

Tennessee Technological University. Cookeville, Tn.

BS in Electrical Engineering with emphasis in digital and controls.

BS in computer Science. GPA = 3.8 of 4.0. Graduated May 1998.

WORK:

5/98 - 5/00 Hampton Tilley. Knoxville, Tn

Worked as a contractor developing warehouse integration and inventory tracking systems.

· Wrote vb applications that generated a menu based input system for handheld scanners using a telnet connection operating over a wireless ethernet network. Also helped setup and configure the wireless 2.5 GHz network and base stations for large factories.

· Built a vb application that communicated with barcode scanners via a PC’s serial port to track boxes on an assembly line.

· Helped to setup and manage a clustered server to ensure high availability and fault-tolerance.

· Developed N-Tier systems using vb com and dcom objects that were implemented both stand alone and within Microsoft Transaction Server.

· Produced dbi objects that interacted with both sql server and oracle databases using ado.

· Used Microsoft Message Queue to transfer xml data packets for synchronization of different database systems.

· Built numerous asp web sites. Including writing the asp, html, and javascript code and installing and configuring IIS.

5/00 – Now Careerbuilder.com Norcross, Ga

Part of a team of developers for the second largest job site on the Internet. Started as a standard web developer and was promoted to senior software engineer on 1/2002. Focused primarily on back-office systems.

· Developed numerous asp web pages that run on a site that receives 8 million page views per day.

· Developed several applications that use the tibco messaging and routing software to process requests from the web site using xml data packets. Includes the application responsible for all purchases of products. Over $80 Million dollars worth of purchases between 1/1/03 and 11/1/03.

· Wrote both javascript and vbscript to perform client side validation and customization on asp pages.

· Used xml data islands with vbscript, xsl, and dom objects to create a dynamic client-side shopping cart to allow the purchasing of products.

· Lead a team that implemented a new Pivotal customer relationship management system. Designed and built the system to manage real-time updates of account information into the CRM.

· Lead a team that used UML to create an object-oriented design for a back-office system that is being implemented in VB.net.

Personal and School Projects:

· Part of a team that developed and tested a control system for an industrial robotic arm.

· Developed the electronic logic to create a 4 function calculator and implemented a successful prototype using an FPGA.

· Built a 3-Axis robotic arm used to precisely drill holes in circuit boards for electronics projects. Robot used the Parallax basic stamp to interface with the PC through the serial port to control the stepper motors.

· Built several PC’s by hand from individually purchased parts.

· Developed a modular software system for processing genetic algorithms using vb com objects. It is capable of using distributed processing across a server farm to increase processing speeds.

· Assembled a small server farm to carry out my research consisting of five Compaq Proliant 6500 quad Pentium Pro processors and accompanying network and power supplies.

· Built an insect simulator that uses artificial neural networks to control the behavior of an insect in a virtual environment. The neural net produces behavior in the virtual insect that is similar to those displayed in organic insects.

· Built the first phase of a developmental neurobiology simulator. The system uses concepts from biology like chromosomes, genes, proteins, and cells to grow a neural network. Currently only cellular differentiation and segmentation is implemented.

· Used the DirectX API in visual basic and C++ for 3D data visualization.

· Wrote a simple object oriented wrapper around the glut library for opengl that encapsulates the code needed to create and maintain multiple linked windows and simplifies the use of menu, keyboard, and mouse interaction.

· Wrote a C++ wrapper for a freeware physics simulation package called Dynamechs that allowed the configuration files to be stored in xml. Used this package to simulate the dynamics of a simple hexapod robot. Have also used the Vortex physics simulator and the Solid collision library.

· Built a simple xml messaging system using named pipes communication.

· All personal C++ code is written using STL standards to insure interoperability between Microsoft and Unix operating systems.

· Used performance analysis and tuning software like CompuWare’s Devpartner studio to optimize the performance of C++ libraries responsible for neural network and developmental simulation.

· Used the ODBC API within C++ libraries to increase the database interaction speeds.

Computer Experience:

Operating Systems: Dos, Windows, Unix, Vax, and Mac os.

Languages and API: C, C++, Fortran, Visual Basic, VB.Net, C#, Visual C++ and Turbo C++ windows programming, COM, DCOM, MTS, MSMQ, OLE\ActiveX, MFC, and STL. ASP, HTML, Javascript, Vbscript, Perl, and Windows Registry. DirectX, OpenGL, and Glut. 8085, m68000, and Vax assembly language. Basic stamp programming.

Database: SQL Server, MS Access and Oracle. ODBC, ADO and ADO.Net

For more information on my personal projects be sure and visit my web page at: http://www.MindCreators.com