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Brandon Barker

Software Developer
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Summary

I am a proud tinkerer, inventor, nerd, student, and full-time software developer. From prosthetic arms, and educational learning platforms, to eye exams, it has been my goal to innovate for the future and create projects that will change the world. Learning is important and can be fun, which is why every year I put myself through circumstances that I would not normally be in, pushing the boundaries of my knowledge.

Career Summary

Work Experience
Uber — Software Engineer Intern — San Francisco, CA
May 2020 — Aug 2020

Collaborated with the Marketplace Data & Intelligence team to build largescale data analysis tooling.

  • Addressed several areas within the software stack to deploy enhancements quickly while adapting to company paradigms.
  • Architected and implemented a dynamic H3 Hexagon clustering product to ease experimentation, a system crucial for Uber's machine learning models.
Cesium GS — Software Engineer Intern — Philadelphia, PA
May 2019 — Aug 2019

Worked within a SaaS platform that empowers developers and data providers to build dynamic 3D geospatial applications.

  • Built integrations for popular 3D content creation tools - WebODM, Blender, and 3D Max - for smooth upload to Cesium ion to generate 3D Tiles for use in CesiumJS and other 3D engines.
  • Championed efforts at improving Cesium JS rendering and solely orchestrated most of the changes within version 1.61.
comma.ai — Software Engineer Intern — San Francisco, CA
May 2018 — Aug 2018

Contributed to the development of the full-stack dashboard application for a self-driving car kit developed by George Hotz, focusing on data to solve severe problems.

  • Designed a mapping engine capable of loading 5,000,000+ miles of data.
  • Structured toolset to generate 3D Tiles, render the data within a browser context, and provide metadata when interacting with the mapping frontend.
Dokkio — Software Engineer Intern — San Francisco, CA
Jun 2017 — Jan 2018

Platform that helps work with all cloud files, regardless of which service it is stored, enabling powerful browsing, searching, and sorting.

  • Initiated a better way to search content, give the content a business context, organize it, and work on it with others to make content-focused teamwork more effective. Analyzed 2000GB of data and recommended a system for categorizing files and folders.
  • Used HTML5 and implemented a document preview engine capable of loading documents with hundreds of pages.
Yurgosky Consulting — Software Engineer Intern — New York City, NY
Jun 2016 — Oct 2016

An analytics, strategy, and technology development company focused on nonprofit, higher education, and social enterprise clients.

  • Worked with clients like Teach for America and the Robinhood Foundation for SalesForce integrations.
  • Built ticketing system and internal contact network graphing tool.
Airphrame — Software Engineer Intern — San Francisco, CA
Jun 2015 — Oct 2015

An unmanned vehicle technology startup developing an aerial imaging and mapping service for commercial markets.

  • Optimized daily operations by building a tool capable of performing data consolidation up to 100GB from the web platform with a custom live zip micro-service.
  • Developed the mapping platform's aerial avoidance system and integrated video-based capture, capable of recording more than 2hours of footage.
Cloudmine — Software Engineer Intern — Philadelphia, PA
Jun 2014 — Aug 2014

A HIPAA-compliant data enablement platform for healthcare, empowering users to operationalize their most sensitive data.

  • Worked on the Android API platform to ensure continuity and scalability.
  • Created a CI system generating docker environments for easy automated staging and production testing.
Activities and Events
HackWCU — Founder & Lead Organizer — West Chester University
Dec 2018 — Present

Founded West Chester University's first hackathon. Registered over 300 students, with 150 in attendance. Raised $20,000 in sponsorship within 3months. Managed a team of five to organize, market, and finance future hackathons.

Computer Science Club — Vice President — West Chester University
Sep 2017 — Present

Led efforts in organizing club events to improve the understanding of Computer Science topics while opening opportunities for internships. Currently pursuing two new initiatives to enhance the school’s atmosphere: HackWCU- a hackathon in the Philadelphia area where students are free to explore their interests and Innovate- a maker space open to all students with over $10,000 of hardware.

Investment Club — Analyst — West Chester University
Sep 2017 — Present

Evaluated stocks worth over $20,000 to be purchased for the growth fund. Pitched stocks to be purchased for the fund, representing 50% growth since recommendation. Collaborated with leadership to implement a more analytics-oriented approach for evaluating other funds and performance.

Mighty Moose Ice Hockey, Inc. — Head of Technology — Philadelphia, PA
Feb 2016 — Jan 2017

Volunteered to help a local non-profit with their website and technical needs. Migrated them to a different web platform and currently developing their website.

STEMHacks Hackathon — Founder & Lead Organizer — STEM Academy
Jun 2014 — May 2017

Organized the first High School Hackathon in Pennsylvania. STEMHack's mission is to stir up the interest of high school students in technology and get them involved. Achieved a total of $10,000 in sponsorship and 100 in attendance in the first year.

Out of the Box Robotics — Lead Software Developer — Coatesville, PA
Sep 2011 — May 2017

A competitive team in the first league winning up to the East Regional Competition. Developed utilities to assist in the usage and construction of the robot. Mentored other team members on programming and software design. Wrote the software to control the autonomous and drive portion of the robot.

Awards
Major League Hacking — Top 50 Hacker — New York City, NY
Jan 2020

Chosen from 100,000+ hackathon participants who exemplify diversity, technological innovation, and leadership; paving the way for the next generation of developers. See the Daily Local's profile.

West Chester University — 1871 Award — West Chester, PA
Jan 2020

Recognized university juniors and seniors who are high-achieving in both the academic and co-curricular realms. Each year, up to 71 students are honored for their outstanding accomplishments related to Academics, Leadership, Community Engagement, and Career Readiness.

WCU Computer Science Department — Repair the World Scholarship — West Chester, PA
Jan 2020

Awarded to four WCU Computer Science majors in each who are juniors or seniors and have high GPAs. Students must indicate how they intend to apply the knowledge they have gained in Computer Science to repairing the world.

PennApps Hackathon — Top 10, Best Hardware Hack, Best Health Hack — Philadelphia, PA
Sep 2019

Participated in the longest-standing hackathon against 1200+ students, reaching the top 10. Engineered an assistive device for cross-space navigation and obstacle avoidance through SLAM with haptic feedback.

DragonHacks Hackathon — Organizers' Choice, Best Accessibility Hack — Philadelphia, PA
April 2019

Devised a path-keeping system for the visually impaired seniors. Used ARCore to compare the expected path against the actual path, providing feedback accordingly. Managed planning and infrastructure between hardware and software systems.

WCU Mathematics Department — Benjamin E. Faber Award — West Chester, PA
Nov 2018

Scholarship awarded to earning students studying mathematics as a minor and display exceptionalism within their classes.

YCPHacks Hackathon — Best YCDS Hack — York, PA
Oct 2017

Developed a big data app capable of finding any person with minimal amount of information scraping through Facebook, Whitepages, and other websites. Ended up being awarded for the best in the category after the tool demonstrated it's flexibility to the judges.

FTC World Competition — Control Award — St. Louis, MO
Apr 2017

Developed a big data app capable of searching out anyone with a minimal amount of information scraping through Facebook, Whitepages, and other websites. Awarded the best in the category after the tool demonstrated its flexibility to the judges.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. — 1st Place — New York, NY
Oct 2015

Tasked with the creation of an application to solve a current problem when given a list of companies. Designed and developed an application to motivate underprivileged kids on getting into college through the gamification of scholarships.

HackBCA Hackathon — 2nd Place — Hackensack, NJ
Apr 2014

Competed with over 500 students in inventing an application within a 24-hour deadline. Created iOculist, an app to test eyesight acuity, which won second place. The event inspired STEMHacks after recognizing the potential of these genres of events.

Delaware Valley Science Convention — 2nd Place — Oaks, PA
Oct 2011

A competition only by invite for innovative science-related projects. Developed a mind-controlled prosthetic arm and took the second place. Received an award from the Navy and the Army, and rated excellence in engineering award. This led to an invitation from Broadcom MASTERS.

Software Background

Languages
Python

JavaScript / TypeScript

Java

HTML / CSS / LESS

Bash

C#

Mathematica

Visualforce

C++

Haskell

Tools and Frameworks
Amazon Web Services
Android
ARCore
Bootstrap
Cesium
Django
Docker
Flask
Git
Google App Engine
Google Web Toolkit
Gradle
Grunt
Heroku
Intel Realsense
JQuery
Mapbox
Maven
Netty
Node.JS
Numpy
Postgres
ReactJS
REST
Semantic UI
SQL
Twilio
WebGL
Webpack

Research & Articles

Twenty or more hours a day, seven days a week, 3D printers in Brandon Barker’s Downingtown, Pa., basement churn out plastic shields that can help prevent the spread of COVID-19 when worn alone or in conjunction with a face mask.

WebODM allows users to generate point clouds, 3D models, and terrain from aerial images. With this Cesium ion integration, users can also fuse the data they’ve collected with other geospatial datasets, such as Cesium World Terrain, all placed in an accurate global context.

This add-on makes it easier to publish and stream 3D models on the web via Cesium ion. It uses the official Khronos glTF Blender exporter to convert the model to glTF before uploading to ion for tiling.

The future of navigation will be centralized around HD maps. While plenty of companies exist to provide this type of data, all are limited by paywalls and strict Terms-of-Service. A new map viewer, called "comma maps," visualizes recorded paths driven, lane markings, and world features. This article discusses the benefits of comma's approach to mapping, and the release of open-source tools, such as entium.

From games to complex traffic control systems, collision detection plays a vital role in today’s modern computers. Currently, there are two algorithms—Quad-Tree and Spatial Hashing—which are often used, and at times, it is based on personal preference. Spatial Hashing is a “bucket” based system where an object’s relative area is increased and then inserted into surrounding buckets to be queried. Quad-Trees are a recursive data structure that divides into quadrants as an object capacity is hit and a bounding box is identified for the selection of a quadrant.

Education

University
West Chester University of Pennsylvania
Aug 2017 — May 2021
computer
Computer Science
Major
card_travel
Business Management
Major
casino
Mathematics
Minor
Courses
MAT 581 — Parallel Computing
CSC 577 — Natural Language Processing
MAT 415 — Introduction to Cryptography
MAT 413 — Computer Algebra
MAT 402 — Software Engineering
CSC 345 — Programming Paradigms
MAT 311 — Linear Algebra
MAT 261 — Calculus II
CSC 241 — Data Structures

Projects

An Intelligent Walker
Elderlyfexpand_more

An Intelligent Walker


Ask your Alexa to take you to a room in the house, and Elderlyf will automatically detect which room you're currently, mapping out a path from your current room to your target room. With vibration disks, strategically located underneath the hand rests, Elderlyf gives you haptic feedback to let you know when objects are in your way and in which direction you should turn. With an intelligent turning system, Elderlyf gently helps with turning corners and avoiding obstacles. With a Jetson Nano and RealSense Cameras, front view obstacles are detected, and a map of the possible routes is generated. SLAM localization was also achieved through those technologies by using two servo motors that could independently apply a gentle brake to the wheels to aid users when turning and avoiding obstacles. Piezoelectric vibrating disks were also used to provide haptic feedback on which direction to turn and when obstacles are close.

Intel Realsense
Segnet
SLAM
OpenCV

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Path Guidance for the Elderly
Elderly Vibrationsexpand_more

Path Guidance for the Elderly


Elderly Vibrations utilizes open-source hardware and API's to make the world more accessible for blind older adults. Android Studio controls extrapolated 3D features using monocular vision. Also, Android Studio provides a variety of packages and Bluetooth solutions to alert the user of possible dangers in their path of travel. Arduino Uno and ESP 32 are used to enhance the connectivity of Bluetooth to pass data from the user to the interface. The Arduino connects to two DC motors with homemade counterweights to generate vibrations that prevent the user from walking into unexpected objects.

Android
ARCore
Arduino
Bluetooth

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Pairing Student Parents with Student Sitters
Ramilyexpand_more

Pairing Student Parents with Student Sitters


Ramily is a mobile app built on the mission of enriching the lives of student parents by reducing childcare concerns. Currently, an unmet need exists at West Chester University (WCU) for student parents, increasing the challenges of the already intense college process. Traditional daycare centers can cost on average $972 a month for toddlers and do not allow parents to pick and choose days of use. Using local West Chester babysitters provides for flexibility in being able to utilize the service only when needed. The app will function specifically for the West Chester University community as participants will be required to enroll with a WCU ID number.

Cesium
Entwine
Material Design
Numpy

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3D Tile Converter for Cesium
Entiumexpand_more

3D Tile Converter for Cesium


Entwine is a data organization library for massive point clouds, designed to conquer datasets of hundreds of billions of points. Meanwhile, Cesium is a JavaScript library for creating 3D globes in a web browser. To bridge the gap between these two services, Entium converts binary files into the 3D Tile format while supporting more Cesium-centric features. The tiles are optimized to reduce overhead in the browser through octree culling. Other functionality includes data quantization, metadata instancing, and property association.

Cesium
Entwine
Material Design
Numpy

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Smart form for VC Investment Curation
Loopboxexpand_more

Smart form for VC Investment Curation


This app categorizes startups and compares them for venture capitalists' analysis purposes. We utilized information extraction and entity recognition to identify and deduct the critical aspects of a startup. Then, we built the training data by scraping from Bloomberg articles with a Quora question. In the backend, we implemented a deep neural network architecture composing of two LSTM units for word semantic embedding for the two documents linked to a series of dense layers terminated with a single unit softmax output for sentence similarity.

NLP
React
Python
Machine Learning

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Eyes for the Visually Impaired
Poket Watchexpand_more

Eyes for the Visually Impaired


The app utilizes the front-facing camera and a minimalistic UI to analyze a room, then provides feedback regarding the surroundings. Furthermore, by enabling the user to use voice commands, they can interact through a much easier mean to find out important information. Some features include being able to tell which side of the room an item of interest is on and describing general surroundings.

React Native
Azure
Tensorflow

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Map of Companies in Nuclear
Nuclear Visualizerexpand_more

Map of Companies in Nuclear


This is a map featuring over 1000 companies working in the nuclear industry and their associated information—location, website, and a short description. The app was built on Mapbox’s infrastructure and Github Pages static hosting and provide a simple visualization of the spread of data and their respective categorization. All data is downloaded on the fly and uses minimal system resources.

Mapbox
Fuzzy Search

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Former Students Seach Engine
YCDSMatcherexpand_more

Former Students Seach Engine


YCDS Matcher runs on Facebook’s graph API, Whitepages, and pipl. Each of the sources contributes to their parts of the data and acts as a form of validation. It works by scraping through multiple different online sources and building a genealogy to then track down a person.

Selenium
Material Design
pipl
Whitepages
Graph API

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Friends Through Concerts
Vibezexpand_more

Friends Through Concerts


Vibez was the result of a challenge in Outsidelands Hacks, built to connect people who attend the concert. The idea was to connect people with a similar interest not to only attend but also bond with friends. The app is built using AngularJS but depends on ionic for components. It also uses a NodeJS server for data retrieval.

AngularJS
ionic
NodeJS
Social Media
Simple and Available Web Proxy
Fancy Proxexpand_more

Simple and Available Web Proxy


FancyProx is an easy-to-deploy proxy utilizing Google App Engine as a host. FancyProx is a more optimized proxy in comparison to others because it caches websites as it goes, allowing for quicker retrieval on a subsequent visit. Furthermore, because it is on the Google App Engine, it enables users to create their proxy easily.

Google App Engine
Python
Proxy
WebApp2
Cache

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Share school To MyHomework
MyTransferexpand_more

Share school To MyHomework


MyTransfer integrates Learning Systems, Schoology, Edmodo, Blackboard, and the homework management system, MyHomework. MyTransfer reverse engineers the MyHomework system so that you do not need to worry about adding assignments anymore. Most importantly, it copies all relevant information, such as date, time, description, and more.

Chrome Extension
Python
Web Scraping
Neural Network
Your School Schedule in a Convenient Place
STEM Classesexpand_more

Your School Schedule in a Convenient Place


With deployment to over 800 students, this tool allows a user to view the amount of time remaining in a class period and the schedule format that corresponds with the day. This was a challenging project to execute because it requires native code injection to enable notifications.

Native Code
Java
Injection
Reflection
Website Scraping

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An Eye Test More Convenient than the Doctor
iOculistexpand_more

An Eye Test More Convenient than the Doctor


A mobile application that tracks the distance between the user's eyes as he backs away from his phone. It uses Snellen's formulas and voice recognition to generate a highly accurate eye exam on your iOS or Android device. This test checks for visual acuity, color blindness, and astigmatism.

iOS
Android
Voice Recognition
Visual Recognition
Simplistic UI

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Updates schoology to be more user friendly and intuitive!
Boostogyexpand_more

Updates schoology to be more user friendly and intuitive!


Enhances Schoology with tons of features: circle icons opposed to squares, hiding classes, rearrange classes, a stagnate sidebar and top bar, infinite scrolling, removal of school themes, rename classes, popup scroll lock, Boostogy settings, quiz highlighter and tools, and many other minor changes.

Javascript
Web Scraping
CSS
HTML Templates
Chrome Extension

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Advanced Collision Based Image Generation
Wordielexpand_more

Advanced Collision Based Image Generation


Inspired by Wordle, it was an attempt to make an Open Source version of API that would allow developers to generate word clouds easily. This was a fun project to make because it required extensive math knowledge and pushed my technical ability to the next level, implementing and learning algorithms to make the tool more efficient.

Java
Math 2D
QuadTree
Word Cloud

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Spend Less Time Traveling and More Time Having Fun
Middle Meetsexpand_more

Spend Less Time Traveling and More Time Having Fun


Middle Meets is an Android application that relies on a Java RESTful server to provide the necessary map data. The app allows friends and acquaintances to meet at a center-point based on a list of locations. It was a great experience working on this project due to its market need.

Android
Material Design
RESTful
Yelp
Google Places

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Planning Hackathons In One Place
STEMHacks Adminexpand_more

Planning Hackathons In One Place


STEMHacks Admin is an elegantly coded dashboard that centralizes the team's functions. It was created as a basic automatic emailer for our sponsors, but the project slowly snowballed into an entire dashboard with a user, chat, broadcasting, and support with many other tools. STEMHacks encompasses a lot of languages and frameworks, increasing its complexity while increasing the team's productivity.

Google App Engine
jQuery
Material Design
Bootstrap
RESTful

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Score FTC Match and Analyse Match Data
FTC Scouterexpand_more

Score FTC Match and Analyse Match Data


FTC Scouter is a Material Design Android application focused on collecting match data and analyzing it. The data is serialized in JSON and then converted into a MySQL database where Tableau visualizes the data. This application was fun to build because it required support for a large squee of devices and required a lot of libraries to simulate the Material Design look.

Android
Material Design
Database Sync
Serialization

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Seamless Audio Syncing Over the Web
Beatsyncexpand_more

Seamless Audio Syncing Over the Web


This app creation was incited due to irritation when trying to listen to songs with friends. BeatSync allows users to create a playlist using their favorite streaming service and have the audio seamlessly synced between multiple devices. It was great working on this project and having to write the web protocol that would allow the music to sync with no auditory difference.

NodeJS
Javascript
jQuery
Python
SoundCloud
Web Protocol

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A Simple App To Tell Jokes
The Laugherexpand_more

A Simple App To Tell Jokes


Comprised of an app engine host and an app, The Laugher allows users to create and share jokes. This project was fun not because of the sheer amount of funny jokes, but the complexity of writing a bot that could scrape websites for jokes and classify them.

Android
Material Design
RESTful
Website Bot
Google App Engine

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The Simplest Static Storage Available
Infinity Cacheexpand_more

The Simplest Static Storage Available


EasyCache is a simplistic yet well documented caching library focused towards Android in making the retrieval and serialization of objects for short term storage simplistic. Using a combination of annotations and a strong class structure EasyCache makes it efficient to quickly retrieve and store objects for later.

Cache
Serialization
SQL
Efficiency

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Analyse Your Conversations through Natural Language Processing
Conversation Analyserexpand_more

Analyse Your Conversations through Natural Language Processing


Employing Natural Language Processing and data management techniques, FCE allows for a user to see the subjects brought up in a Facebook conversation and determine whether the conversation was negative or positive. Using libraries such as D3 and NLTK, the application makes it easy to display conversation metrics and information. The project was thoroughly enjoyable as it was a project that had not been previously experimented.

Google App Engine
Python
Natural Language Processing
Node
D3

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Quick And Simple Way To Take Screenshots
BitBar Screenshotexpand_more

Quick And Simple Way To Take Screenshots


Built on top of BitBar, a simple dock framework, the tool allows for easy screenshots. The app utilizes AppleScript and shell to activate the machine’s screen capture tool and then redirects the image to where the user wants.

applescript
shell
bitbar
python

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Advanced Dynamic Packaging System For On The Fly App Modification
Dynappexpand_more

Advanced Dynamic Packaging System For On The Fly App Modification


With the utilization of maven and a custom installer, Android apps can on-the-fly load code. The maven plugin uses the Android compiler to convert Java applications into native Android applications and copies to code into the phone's directory. The phone then uses a dynamic loader to inject the code into the program easily.

Maven
Dynamic Loading
Android
Custom Compilier
Java

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Neurally Controlling A Prostetic Arm Through EEG's
Mind Control Prosthetic Armexpand_more

Neurally Controlling A Prostetic Arm Through EEG's


Adopting the Emotive EPOC headset, a simple pattern recognition algorithm, and a Bluetooth interface, a LEGO prosthetic arm can be controlled through thought. The headset takes in a raw EEG input then a program made in C using the emotive developer library and correlates specific thought patterns to a calibrated action. The application then activates the Lego Mindstorms through a Bluetooth connection. Currently, the hand only has two groups of movable fingers and the thumb; however, in newer versions of the prosthetic, more hydraulic arms could be added. The project was recognized by multiple fairs and had a broad range of applications.

EPOC
C++
EEG
Neural Input
Pattern Recognition
Bluetooth
Prosthetic