Resume of Jeffrey Somers

Jeffrey Somers

GRAPHICS & AI DEMOS AT WEB SITE: http://jsomers.com/

Objective	A game programming position at a creative and dynamic company.
Languages	§ Extensive knowledge of C++ and C (10 years professional experience) § High Level Shader Language § Experience with Java, SQL, and Perl § Tools and SDKs: Direct3D, Visual C++ .NET 2003, VTune, Incredibuild, Perforce, SourceSafe, Bink, 3DS Max SDK, NVidia's FX Composer, Access
Environments	Windows NT, Solaris, AIX
Work Experience	2003 – 2004 Tilted Mill Entertainment Wayland, MA Programmer § Programmed C++ and High-Level Shader Language code for Immortal Cities: Children of the Nile, a city-building strategy game set in ancient Egypt. § Worked extensively with Stainless Steel Studios’ Empire Earth engine, which was licensed for this game. § Designed and programmed shader code for shadows, sky display (sun, moon, stars, sky lighting), and the Nile river. § Designed and implemented graphics display, game logic and database tables for quarries and pyramids, two major structures within Children of the Nile. § Took the initiative to add compressed textures to the engine, which saved large amounts of memory. § Added figure tracking windows to the engine, a major feature. § Performed major optimization work on both the game engine and the model exporter used by artists. For example, exporting one large model originally took an hour, but optimization reduced the time to one minute. § Greatly improved initial loading period by a factor of 2 to 3 times. § Ported engine from DirectX7 to DirectX9. § Fixed difficult bugs in many different areas: sound stuttering, font display issues, graphical glitches, crash bugs in the AI, and performance issues. § Prototyped terrain engine for next game. 1997 – 2002 Fundtech Corporation Burlington, MA Senior Software Engineer § Designed and coded publish-and-subscribe subsystem for Fundtech’s treasury management solution. Coded both front end (Java behind DHTML) and platform-independent back end (C++). § Traveled to our London office to troubleshoot customer problems and to give a talk on the publish-and-subscribe functionality. § Gave a talk for implementation managers on publish-and-subscribe setup, use, and troubleshooting. § Fixed bugs in C++ and Java code: program crashes, memory leaks, performance bugs and a problematic third-party COM component. § Took the initiative to learn Perl to write a script to change the code to improve its performance. The script saved many hours of tedious coding. § Used Rational Rose (a visual modeling tool) to design server-side components. Coded and unit tested the components using Visual C++ and Tuxedo, a transaction middleware framework. § Evaluated Sun’s Visual Workshop C++ compiler, and tested a build of our prototype on Solaris. Helped with basic UNIX system administration.
	1989 – 1995 Marcam Corporation Newton, MA Software Engineer § Designed and programmed Windows programs using C++, Microsoft Foundation Classes and additional foundation classes created at Marcam. § Co-leader of small team rewriting crucial transaction processing programs for PRISM¾Marcam's production and inventory control software package: § Responsible for project scheduling and evaluation of possible new features for the rewritten programs. § Rewrote several of the key transaction programs of the PRISM product. § Prepared and presented a technical overview of the architecture of the rewritten transaction programs at Marcam Annual User Conference.
Coding Demos	Coding demos available at: http://jsomers.com/ § View Independent Progressive Mesh implementation of Garland and Heckbert’s Surface Simplification Using Quadric Error Metrics (SIGGRAPH 97). This program is written in C++ and uses the STL, OpenGL, and the Windows API (without MFC). § Highly optimized “N Queens Problem” solver, which is 2 to 10 times as fast as every other implementation I can find on the Internet (except for one Japanese supercomputer program that used my code as a baseline: http://www.yuba.is.uec.ac.jp/~kis/doc/paper/uec-is-2004-06.pdf). § Patzer, a chess-playing program. Uses alpha-beta search with history table and principal continuation for improved alpha-beta cutoffs. § BSP (Binary Search Partition) Compiler and Viewer.
Education	Harvard Extension School, Cambridge, MA § Courses included Advanced Computer Graphics, Artificial Intelligence, Advanced Programming in Microsoft Windows NT and Object Oriented Design.
	Williams College, Williamstown, MA B.A. in Mathematics and Chemistry § Courses included Computer Science, English, Philosophy, and Studio Art. § Studied in Stirling University in Stirling, Scotland for one semester.
Personal	Beginner’s knowledge of Mandarin Chinese. Interests include juggling and photography.