Cooper’s Capers

Objective

To continue improving my software development skills, to learn about new techniques and technologies, to apply my knowledge in new and interesting ways, and to share my passion for software development.

Skill Summary

Thinking on my feet while still maintaining a focus on planning and troubleshooting, strong problem-solving skills and extensive teamwork experience.

Programming Languages

Perl, Java (Plus JUnit, AspectJ, Swing, Servlets/JSPs, some Hadoop), C/C++, x86 Assembly, bash scripting, Python, Ruby, PHP, SQL, HTML/XHTML/JavaScript, LaTeX, Lisp/CLOS and Prolog, but I am always ready and willing to learn more.

Languages

Fluent spoken and written English. Semi-fluent spoken French. Functional German.

Experience

Projects

09/2009-04/2010 – Blog Opinion Mining.

Final-year group project using artificial intelligence techniques to determine the nature of opinions presented in blog posts.

09/2009-12/2009 – Indexer/Searcher.

Wrote a small search engine to index and query a corpus using various ranking/optimization algorithms.

Winter 2009 – IEEE Montreal Website.

Wrote a web-based enterprise application for ieee Montreal for content, events and news management.

Winter 2008 – Course Scheduler.

Wrote software in C++ to process a course prerequisite hierarchy and schedule set and output an optimised schedule based on students’ availabilities. Course project for Software Process.

Winter 2006 – Optimisation of Hidden Markov Models. Advisor: Dr Mathieu Blanchette.

Used trie-based pre-processing to speed up HMM-based scans of large datasets, specifically applied to the blast utility. Course project for Mining Biological Sequences, co-submitted with Ethan Kim.

Fall 2004 – Asymptotic Steady-State Behaviour of Cellular Automata. Advisor: Dr Leon Glass.

Wrote software in C++ to distribute, simulate and analyse progression of cellular automata. Variation in densities of normally-distributed automata were observed using varying initial density configurations.

Work Experience

12/2008-09/2009 – Software Technician.

General Physics / Pratt and Whitney – Developed web abstraction of company-wide physical information system, migrated online courses to upgraded versions of eLab authorware, prepared and uploaded courses to Pratt CMS, technical support.

05/2008-07/2008 Software Testing and Support Specialist.

XSilva Systems – Tested new builds of POS software, filed bugs, read crash reports, took technical support calls, answered support e-mails.

07/2007-03/2008, 05/2006-08/2006 – Bioinformatician

McGill University/Universite de Montreal/Montreal Heart Institute – Maintained and used Perl-based proteomics and genomics software for analysis of bioinformatics data, developed algorithms and software for analysis.

Education

2007-Present – Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec.

BEng, Software Engineering. Expected Graduation: April 2010.

2006-2007 – McGill University, Montreal, Quebec.

MSc, Biology, Bioinformatics Option. Completed 35 credits toward the MSc.
Thesis Topic: Predicting aggravating and buffering genetic interactions in C. elegans.

2003-2006 – McGill University, Montreal, Quebec.

BSc, Faculty Program in Biology and Mathematics, Minor in Computational Molecular Biology.

School Activities

06/2009-05/2010 – Concordia Engineering and Computer Science Association — VP Academic.

Elected by the engineering student body to organise the Iron Ring Ceremony (among other events), to co-ordinate academic affairs, and to be the link between students, department representatives and faculty.

09/2008-05/2009 – Concordia University Software Engineering and Computer Science Representative.

Elected to represent the interests of all Software Engineering and Computer Science students at council meetings at the student governmental, departmental and faculty levels. Awarded “Rep of the Year”.

Awards/Honours

2008 – Peter Matthews Memorial Scholarship

For demonstrating academic excellence and involvement at Concordia and in the general community.

2008 – Golden Key Society Membership.

Invitation-only, sent to students in the top 10 of their program.

Interests

Reading anything that will fascinate or amuse me, cooking foods I have never tried before, leisure programming, attending foreign and repertory film festivals, independent language study, beer tasting, bicycling.