Data Project

Jacob Zachariah

abkpc6@r.postjobfree.com

http://www.jacobzach.com/0407.html

Interests: Embedded systems. Video/streaming technologies, 3D Graphics,

Consumer, Medical devices. Security systems. Computer Vision.

02/10-Present Part time iPhone projects Las

Vegas, NV

Wrote a TightVNC Client application for the iPhone, using OpenGL-ES, to

deliver near real-time display over WiFi connectivity. The intent is to

allow watching video from home security cameras, on an iPhone.

Working on an iPhone project involving graphics effects like user

annotations using paintbrush, color palette, on camera images.

04/09 - 03/10 Austin GeoModeling Las Vegas,

NV

Worked on various enhancements to an Oil & Gas exploration 3D data

interpretation application using C/C++/Qt/X-Motif on CentOS Linux. Worked

on 3d surface modeling, filtering based on data & fault surfaces. Added

smooth display of mesh,contour overlays on 3d intersecting surfaces using

GL stenciling. Added calculations of detail values from coarse well path,

surface triangle data to allow accurate value displays tied to mouse

movement. Improved application performance wherever possible by

streamlining data loading, memory usage & rendering of large well datasets.

Ported drawing of several scene elements to using VBOs & implemented color

picking. Worked on GUI using X-Motif/Qt.

06/08 - 04/09 WMS Gaming

Las Vegas, NV

Worked on security & software authentication features for an embedded Linux

platform. Led a project to add support in the Operating System for a vendor

USB Hardware Key & worked with Israeli vendor to resolve various

development & run-time, system level issues on the platform.

Devised an in-house driver installer(rpm) using ATI drivers, for enabling

3d hardware acceleration within Fedora & CentOS Linux sandbox'ed

development environments. Worked with developers in various international

locations in customizing and utilizing latest graphics cards/drivers on

their development boxes. Added various OS functionalities for video,

solving field issues, daily troubleshooting various parts of the OS

(emphasis on 3d/video) & performance improvements.

10/07 - 05/08 AMD/ATI Santa Clara,

CA

Worked on the OpenGL driver (windows) & new ASIC introduction. Work

included programming hardware changes at the hardware compatibility layer

for new ASICs, debugging hangs, screen corruptions, improving test

programs, performance analysis, regression testing.

12/06- 10/07 Austin GeoModeling Austin, TX

Worked on a 3D geological interpretation product using C, OpenGL,X-Motif on

Linux. Added many product features, fixes requested by clients

(BP,Chevron), such as displaying overlays like culture, faults, user

annotations, seismic overlays, images etc, on 3d surfaces in different GL

windows using FBOs, multitexturing, VARs, 3d textures, context sharing.

Added mouse dragging of an object through 3d space, along an arbitrary

path(e.g deviated well path). Added 3d, 2d compasses to show North; and

colorbar enhancements. Improved the Postscript hardcopy capability by

adding the ability to layer the gl drawings and images using the glpr

library. Sped up drawing graphics primitives (e.g circles) by using

optimized algorithms. Added 3d interpretation capability, allowing

geologists to click on any 3d object & use that point in surface

construction. Added support for the 'SpaceNavigator' 3d tracking usb device

in the product. Retooled & improved many capabilities like contouring &

surface overlays. Added multi-stage filtering capability for 3d surfaces,

allowing users to apply multiple data filters on surfaces. Used Normal

Mapping for displaying high-res surface details on lower resolution

surfaces/geometry. Added feature to generate mpeg screen captures.

Independent project: Implemented a Volume Rendering technique, based on

'Volume Rendering Techniques'-Ikits et al, GPU Gems, 2004, NVIDIA. Devised

a more efficient algorithm from said paper, to generate view aligned proxy

geometry (slice planes), which does not require sorting or intersecting all

cube edges, per slice plane.

9/2003 - 12/06. Sierra Design Group/Bally Technologies

Las Vegas, NV

Worked on an embedded Linux OS built on RedHat 7.3 for video slot

machines. Work included fixing bugs, adding features on various aspects of

the OS, like peripherals (Printers, Bill Validators), host communications,

GUI aspects, various functionalities. Had among the highest bug-fixing

rates while tasked to bug fixing during first 6 months. E.g. Fixed a

critical, intermittent, event-out-of-order field issue in a kernel convert

IPC module. Helped develop an OpenGL based video server for displaying

games. Worked on a tool to.convert mng animations to a proprietary delta

compressed format, for faster playback & lower memory requirements.

Developed a threaded video streaming capability, for streaming the delta-

compressed animations directly off the compact flash instead of loading

them into limited system memory. Used nVidia extensions for the best

performance while updating textures. Did investigations into OpenGL

extensions and shaders (Cg, glsl) and developed prototypes. Worked on

packaging a minimal XFree86 system in the OS. Involved with testing new

hardware, ETX modules & graphics cards from vendors. Performed testing &

benchmarking of OpenGL features on different hardware, graphics cards and

drivers, in the OS.

Was responsible for maintenance of the video server (direct drawing to the

framebuffer) in the OS. Extended it to efficiently draw to a GL

texture(using an nv-gl extension) allowing it to be used for rotated

monitors/displays. Wrote tools to detect number of connected monitors to

PCI graphics card at OS boot, read monitor EDID information, and configure

the video server to draw on a variety of display configurations including

widescreen, multi headed/resolution, rotated displays using xfree86, nVidia

drivers; which were included in patent filings for electronic gaming

machines.

Developed an embedded Browser application system for the OS, on a dual

screen hardware platform. Wrote a browser server to accept requests from

clients to manage browser windows. Added extensions to the browser library

to run Javascript code, send synthetic mouse events, error sniffing and

other extensions. Prototyping included web technologies like, Ajax, PHP,

MySQL, GnuPlot, Javascript, Apache, CGI scripts, and sockets. Added support

for true type font handling in the OS. Investigated and fixed various X and

OpenGL issues. Built the gcc2.96 compiled OS with gcc3.2, fixing

errors/warnings. Worked with USB touchscreens and wrote a USB device driver

to send touch events to the browser windows.

11/2000 - 10/2001 iM Networks Mountain

View, CA

Designed, developed and maintained a Windows jukebox application ('iM

Jukebox') that allowed for the creation of a database of MP3 playlists

(new, or imported from other players like Winamp, Musicmatch, Real etc)

that reside on a computer network, and were streamed to iM tuning clients,

like the Philips FW-i1000 home stereo system. The application included a

multithreaded HTTP server that streamed out local MP3 files across a

network to an iM Tuning client like the Philips FW-i1000. Ported a portion

of the application to Java.

Worked on a Windows product ('iM Radio Tuner') that allowed a listener with

a broadband connection to tune into hundreds of preselected Internet radio

stations from around the world through the iM Tuning service. Implemented

features like offline operation, playlist readers, and maintenance of the

product.

3/99 - 9/2000 MuSE Technologies(a Sandia Labs spinoff)

Albuquerque, NM

Worked on a Finite Element Analysis library; added a Displacement

Mapping/Surface morphing capability for FEA models, using data variables

like Pressure, Temperature to generate displacements for the nodes of the

model in a simulation. This technique was conceived for examination of FEA

data on tire models & was requested by Goodyear. Used in applications

developed for reading CMold, Abaqus FEA datasets. Added new features and

fixed several issues.

Worked on a Naval Exercise Analysis(MEXAN) system for the U.S Navy, that

allowed for the re-creation and simulation of Naval exercises in the MuSE

4D environment. Worked on filtering, LOD models, GUI and coloring various

contacts between the units. Added 2d/XY plots for the units (e.g. depth,

speed, relative bearing etc) displayed as sidewall instruments.

Worked on an app ('Tire Contact Analysis') for Goodyear Tire and Rubber to

visualize in 4D using OpenGL, Fl-Tk, the laser mapping data of tire treads.

It involved reading sequences of tread mapping data over time and

visualizing them in the MuSE 4D environment with dynamic color mapping,

displaying rib scan, cross-scan data in 2D plots, and other features to

assist tire engineers in understanding the wear data better and spotting

anomalies, irregular wear in tire treads.

Helped develop an Air Traffic Control prototype application that displayed

2 hours of FAA flight data over the continental US and fusing data from

different sources and bringing out patterns, anomalies in the data.

Features included: Proximity detection of flights with airports and other

flights, flight altitude, contrails, status, waypoint data, display of ATC

centers, sectors & modules using altitude thresholding & colorbar mapping.

Integrated WSI weather data like lightning strikes, Jetstreams & Echo tops.

Developed a prototype integrating the VTree (by CG2 Inc) scene graph with

the MuSE 4D environment, allowing developers using the VTree toolkit to

integrate their applications with the MuSE environment. Worked on reading

tire design, test & performance data, output from a Goodyear database

application into Excel spreadsheets using VBA; & designing ways using 3D

plots, volumes, etc. to represent large quantities of data in an intuitive

manner in a Muse application.

Worked on representing the earth's atmosphere using an FEA sphere in a

prototype app, that was used to show how solar flares affect the earth's

atmosphere. The MSIS (Mass Spectrometer, Incoherent Scatter) volumetric

data was mapped as nodal data at latitude, longitude locations on the FEA

sphere model and the FEA sphere would display the color variations, and

also 'morph' based on the data (using the surface morphing technique

described above).

Worked on product development; bug fixing; making apps, multi-pipe, shared

environment compliant and improving performance. Provided trade show

support. (SIGGRAPH99, ATCA99).

9/98 - 1/99 Seismic Micro Technology Houston, TX

[Contracted with SMT through IIS-XOX since early '97]

Designed and developed a 3D Seismic Visualization product using MFC,

OpenInventor, OpenGL. Implemented seismic sections, arbitrary cuts, ribbon

cuts, hinged cuts, chair cuts through the volume data using Textured

planes. Wrote surface tesselators for constructing 3d Horizon, Fault

surfaces from arbitrary points. Surfaces would update in 3d based on user

edits on a 2d grid. Added display of culture (land characteristics) data at

user definable sub surface depths. Added cursor tracking, displaying model

coordinates, 3d picking and subvolume clipping. Enhanced the system from

single 3D Line/Trace survey to an XY system with multiple 3D & 2D surveys

capability. Displaying orientation of the model through a 3d compass. Added

capability to selectively render volume data using volume bitmasks. Added

Colorbar manipulators to interactively view the characteristics of

surfaces, seismic sections, by selecting and manipulating the colors on the

high, low amplitudes. Moving a user adjustable cube through the seismic

volume & seeing the seismic data on the cube faces. Provided trade show

support. (SEG, AAPG).

Worked on adding enhancements to a Volume Rendering library by VoluMetrix

Inc. Fixed a critical volume rendering issue (Loss of image fidelity due to

1voxel:1pixel mapping) when zooming into a 3D scene.

Other Projects

Wrote a 2d to 3d model generation sweep tool (win32) with Gouraud, ZBuffer

rendering. Wrote several graphics animation, rendering applets in Java.

Wrote shortest route/pathfinding programs using A-Star, Dijkstra's

algorithms.

Education:

2003 Cal State University - Stanislaus [GPA 3.68].

2002: Cal State University - Hayward. [GPA 3.86]

2001-Oct: GRE (Verb:580 Quan:780 Anly:760)

1995 - B.S (ComputerScience), Pune University.

UnderGraduate Project : Natural Phenomena Simulation

This project was based on the paper 'A Collision Based model of Spiral

Phyllotaxis' - SIGGRAPH Computer graphics -July92 The project dealt with

simulating Natural Phenomena like Mountains, Trees, Flowers etc. using

Advanced Geometric Modeling techniques like Procedural Modeling, Fractal

Modeling, Grammar based modeling to generate the wire frame 3d models which

would be later rendered by a renderer such as 3D-Studio.

Submitted & accepted for the 'Slides of Student Work' section at SIGGRAPH

97.

Volunteered at a Molecular Biology lab at CSUH as part of independent study

& also wrote an application using VC++/MFC to find protein/nucleotide

sequences in any selected genome database. Worked with a microbiology

professor/researcher at CSUH, and wrote 3d visualization prototypes for

visualizing data. Created a graphical 4d simulation of bacterial growth of

different strains of bacteria, which she used at her seminars.

Programming C,C++, ObjectiveC, MFC, VisualBasic, Java, Fl/Tk, X-Motif,

Sockets

Operating Windows, Linux, MacOS, SGI-IRIX

systems

Development VC++, SlickEdit, Xcode, vi, gdb/ddd, Purify, WinDBG,

tools valgrind, kcachegrind, ViewVC,

Graphics OpenGL, OpenInventor, glsl

Libraries mozilla, XFree86, directfb, glpr(GL printing), gdk/gtk,

debugged /used svgalib, libusb

Database MySQL, MS-Access

Web PHP, Javascript, Apache

technologies

Source Control CVS, Perforce, SourceSafe

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