Jeffrey K. Cunningham

Work History

• Developed autonomous purchasing agents using Ruby and Selenium, the core technology for web startup Netplenish.com. Solved problem with poor quality affiliate product feed data driving high levels of customer servicing by designing a real-time price and availability checking system (Ruby, Javascript and PhantomJS). Analyzed metrics and implemented web-based performance monitoring system in Lisp.
• Built toolchain and updated Linux kernel and drivers for Extratech Corporation's proprietary motion controller board. Derived the equations of motion for a 5-axis motion controlled waterjet cutting head using quaternions instead of classical Euler angles to improve accuracy and reduce computational load on embedded processor. Proposed alignment and calibration technique applying least-squares optimization to over-determined measurement sets.
• Designed web-based system enabling customers to virtually 'try on' hats for Lady Diane Hats. Nginx+Php+Jquery+Octave-based system employs 'snakes —active contour image processing—to locate head outlines from uploaded portraits, then cut away background to transparency, scale and sandwich between hat back and foregrounds to produced final fitted image.
• Wrote threaded master control loop model and provided software architecture solutions and advice on Intrepid Systems autonomous robot entry in NASA Sample Return Challenge.

• Implemented software signal processing components of satellite communication system in Matlab and C++. Solved significant performance issues by re-engineering parallel-processing architecture employing MPI-based architecture on multiple Linux-based blade servers.
• Developed quaternion-based orbital model and link budget for nanosat communication system using Lisp.

• Created high-performance, high-resolution image processing library in C++ used to perform detection and feature extraction on satellite radar imagery.
• Designed and implemented criteria and testbench for analyzing performance of air-to-surface seeker missile homing algorithms using FLIR imagery. Re-engineered existing Government laboratory code to improve performance, maintainability, reliability and portability.
• Developed accurate link performance model for global airborne satellite communication system—Connexion by Boeing—used to determine power and bandwidth constraints applied to transponder channels on commercial aircraft Internet services. Employed a variety of languages, including C++, Lisp and Perl.
• Designed and implemented telemetry analysis tools used to remotely monitor performance and detect link degradation on in-service aircraft prior to failure. Isolated a difficult problem by correlating aircraft geolocation and orientation with link degradation due to differential deterioration of left versus right polarization antenna feeds to phased arrays on aircraft.

• Designed fixed-point FIR filters for modulator signal processing block using original optimization technique to meet challenging size and speed requirements in FPGA modulator.
• Responsible for FPGA validation which included development of Matlab unit test framework, test vectors, operation and troubleshooting. Led team responsible for lab verification of FPGA implementation and continued regression testing throughout revision cycles.
• Developed C++ reference model for ASIC demodulator signal processing block used in both validation and verification. Components included FIR filters, QAM modulators and demodulators, complex wave-shapers and adaptive decision feedback equalizers.
• Responsible for debugging, test and tuning phases of ASIC signal processing design.

• Developed and maintained GUI-driven performance model for airborne links between Kx and Ku-band phased array antennas and geosynchronous satellites. Written in Visual C++.
• Wrote GUI-driven program to import scanned images of satellite EIRP and G/T earth foot prints, register landmarks, and rasterize into geographical grid of interpolated values using LMS fit to find map projection parameters.

Patents, Papers

Education

Interests