David Cofer Email & Phone Number

Huntsville, Alabama Area

Huntsville, Alabama Area

Madison, Alabama

Building and testing the intelligent, adaptive robots that reproduce the behavior of insects, and other animals, by mimicking the neural networks in their brain. As part of my doctoral thesis I built a neuromechanical simulation application that allows researchers to model the biomechanics and the nervous system of living organisms so they can test hypotheses on neural control of behavior. I have upgraded this software to make it easy to build and test neurally controlled robotic systems. I am now in the process of trying to build robots based on that platform that can perform useful functions like cleaning your house, mowing your lawn and so on. I am also in the process of building and selling related electronics projects as I build them to meet my primary of goal building intelligent robots.

Huntsville, Alabama Area

Technical project leader for simulation and training applications for unmanned vehicle systems.

Norcross, Atlanta Ga

Worked on large multi-tier projects to build and manage the financial systems for the largest US internet job board. Exentsive use of Agile/Scrum methodologies for lean development.

Greater Atlanta Area

Project manager and lead developer for a neuromechanical simulation package named AnimatLab (www.animatlab.com). • Performs near real-time simulation of biologically realistic neural networks and muscle and skeletal models that are situated in a physically accurate virtual world. • DirectX initially used for 3-D graphics, but now uses openscenegraph (OSG). Physics for the virtual world uses CM-labs Vortex engine. • UI was written in vb.net and c#, while the simulation code was in STL compliant C++. A managed C++ wrapper allows the GUI to interact with the simulation. • Uses OOD standards. Plug-in based so 3rd parties can add custom code. • Built entire website, including over 50 video training tutorials.• Over course of project managed three other developers.Dissertation on the neuromechanics of locust jumping. • Simulations were run on a computer grid and data was analyzed using custom scripts within Matlab. • Figures were generated within Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop. • Published three papers in peer-reviewed journals related to this work. Currently helping to write a text book on neuromechanics.Electronics and Robotics • Designed and built several Xilinx FPGA boards from scratch using the Eagle PCB software. • Built a hexapod robot which used the neural net from an insect to walk. • Extensive experience with several microcontroller systems including: PIC, basic stamp, and basic atom. • Designed and built a hybrid control system that interfaces the nervous system of a live crayfish to a virtual body running on a PC in real time.

Norcross, Atlanta Ga

I was part of a team of developers for the second largest job site on the Internet. • Helped develop the sales system that reps used to purchase products. Xml data packets were used to communicate between the asp.net pages and business and data objects running on a large server farm which interfaced with a sql server database. • Developed a set of web pages that outside customers could use to power the career sections on their sites. The appearance of the pages for each customer could be tailored to make it look like you were still on their site. Some of the major customers were Walt-Disney, Hewlett Packard, and the US Army. • Built the tibco handler application that performs all product purchases for the website. Used business objects to create the new contracts and accounts, and perform CC transactions. Processed over $80 Million in products from 1/1/03 to 11/1/03.• Helped develop the core systems to interface our database with a pivotal customer management system to provide real-time updates of users, accounts and products. • Heavily involved in importing the data from other acquired websites so they could be shut down.

Worked as a contractor developing warehouse integration and inventory tracking systems (SCADA). • Used visual basic, asp, Microsoft transaction server (mts), sql server, and oracle to gather information from barcode scanners, PLCs, and hand-held devices to track products on assembly lines. • Developed hand-held scanner user interface and backend objects. • Built numerous applications to map data from one system or db to another using either real time or batched processing.

Doctor Of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Neurobiology And Neurosciences

Master'S Degree, Biology/Biological Sciences, General

Bachelor'S Degree, Biology/Biological Sciences, General

Bachelor'S Degree, Computer Science

Bachelor'S Degree, Electrical And Electronics Engineering