Steven G. Dunn

Objective:

To develop innovative software as part of a highly talented, cross-disciplinary team in a fast-paced development environment.

Experience:

Software engineering in a cross-disciplinary team responsible for the design, development, building, testing, and flight of a full-size, autonomous, long-endurance, unmanned helicopter.

• Developed the architecture and full design specification for the core internal aircraft communications protocol responsible for passing all the real time, high rate sensor and command data between the aircraft's electronics, sensors, and actuators.
• Prototyped, refined, and built the flight implementation of the core internal aircraft communications software infrastructure in C++ to run on VxWorks, a custom real-time operating system, Windows, and Linux.
• Served on flight test team for aircraft testing and validation. Provided engineering support during the milestone flight that exceeded the world record for helicopter endurance.
• Designed, developed, and maintained ground station software for flight testing, vehicle control, vehicle health monitoring, and data analysis.
• Upgraded, enhanced, and maintained main flight computer software.
• Integrated custom embedded electronics, electro-mechanical actuators, flight computers, flight software, and ground station software.
• Designed and built an architecture for providing flight hardware fail-over capabilities to detect critical faults and switch to backup systems for increased system reliability.

Research and development of wearable technologies for pre-smart phone mobile devices. Integrated compact computers and electronics into clothing and explored applications for mobile computing.

• Performed research on using sensors to add contextual awareness to mobile software platforms, developing nontraditional user interfaces and applications adapted to mobile computing.
• Built a custom X Windows window manager for presenting user applications in a small format display environment.
• Wrote embedded software for custom electronic sensor boards in C.
• Demonstrated and presented cutting edge technologies and research to investors and high-level executives of leading companies from around the world.
• Co-authored an academic paper on using machine learning algorithms to identify a user's state (sitting, walking, running, driving, etc.) by extracting data from various sensors worn on the body.
• Performed basic wearable computer construction, including surface mount and through hole soldering, wiring and cable routing, sewing and textile construction.

Research and development of file systems, creation of software tools and platforms for web enabled applications.

• Worked on a distributed, cross-platform, journaling file system. Wrote device drivers for Linux and Windows as well as built utilities for file system management, error detection and recovery.
• Developed and built a document creation tool to convert PDF documents to and from an easily editable XML format, allowing dynamic web content to auto-generate precisely formatted legal documents.
• Designed and built an online auction engine for web sites with support for automated billing and item fulfillment.

Designed, built, and maintained cutting-edge front and back ends for static and dynamic corporate web sites.

• Built internet and intranet web sites for large corporations including the first online financial loan calculator for the banking industry, e-commerce engines, and a commercial online fantasy sports league engine servicing over 10,000 players using Perl, HTML, JavaScript, Java, and back end databases.
• Built early geographic information systems for linking customers with their local sales representatives.
• Developed and deployed document management systems for handling news and press releases, an online job posting system, and financial pages including dynamically generated graphical stock information.

Education:

Publications:

Other Achievements, Qualifications, and Activities:

Personal Projects (ongoing) - Learning to build mobile phone applications on the iPhone using Objective C on iOS. Built a 3D graphics engine, various physics models, and basic artificial intelligence projects related to autonomous navigation, path planning, and game theory for the PC. Built a software simulation of a simple processor, including a custom machine instruction set, assembly language and assembler.
MIT Rocket Team (2001-2002) - Manufactured and tested mechanical parts for a prototype rocket engine using basic machine shop tools (milling machines, lathes, drill presses and band saws). Helped perform hot fire testing of the engine. Developed basic LabView components for engine testing and analysis.
Grinning Lizard Software (1993-1996) - Worked on development of a 3D multiplayer video game called Bug Eyed Monsters for OS/2.
Virginia Tech Phantom-Human Powered Submarine Team (1993-1995) - Helped design and build the control surfaces and navigational system. Did wet layup construction of a fiberglass and foam core composite submarine hull. Built basic computer-aided design models for various parts of the vehicle.
Eagle Scout (1991)