Hello, my name is Isaac.
I am currently an undergraduate student at Iowa State University studying computer engineering.
My expected graduation date is Spring 2026.
Career Objective
After graduation I would like to find a job where I can either work on embedded or distributed systems. I would enjoy to be in a role that might get defined as Systems Engineer or Systems Architect. I might look to start a masters program part time after undergrad while I work full time. For the masters I would be interested in data storage and security, distributed systems, or other similar subjects.
I also started a company that I have been putting work into since December 2024. It is a Music storage and collaboration site that I believe many producers and artists find useful. I personally create music as a hobby and use it to store my projects and save versions + stems. It's called Neoko Music and its located at neokomusic.com, more later.
Senior Design Project
sddec25-15.sd.ece.iastate.eduFor my senior design I worked on a 4 person team to build an automatic camera tracking algorithm that was implemented as a plugin for the open-source software blender. I specifically worked on the UI Implementation, error detection, testing, and linux compatability.
From this project I got to dive deeply into COLMAP/GLOMAP image processing pipelines. I also gained expeience working with blenders API which can transfer over to many other applications. For the testing, I learned good techniques in classifying and benchmarking speed + efficiency. It was a hard problem to try and classify the speed of th algorithm because most recorded videos are unique.
Neoko Music
Neoko Music is a project started about a year ago as stated above. It is currently only developed by me and overall is a music storage + collab site. So my role has been everything. It is currently run on a Dell Poweredge R730 running FreeBSD operating system. The tech stack includes Flask, MySQL, Nginx, Redis, Javascript, and some endpoints being developed in Rust. The storage is split across HDD and SSD, no NVMe's are currently used.
From this project I have learned almost from the ground up how to build and run a system. Everything from the hardware to the html code. I've learned how to build a CI/CD pipeline and tests into my project (mainly because I eventually got to a spot where it was necessary due to endpoints breaking after changes). I got experience with Stripe and integrating that into my project, working with Webhooks, and a custom email system.
Unedited Weekly
uneditedweekly.com / unnedited.com
Unedited Weekly is a blogging site that was made with a friend that likes to write newsletters. My role was a technical creator. This project uses much of the same architecture as Neoko Music, but is an entirely different code base. This project features my own take on custom user profiles, a content feed, and the ability to make different types of posts. It was fun to create an automatic email sending system and made me realize how complex and annoying SMTP can be.
Working directly with my co-owner who makes content, I am the technical person who makes sure people get their emails delivered weekly. This has taught me some valuable soft skills in working with another person. How to talk about tasks, and holding each other accountable.
Small Data Encryption - Research Project
Small Data EncryptionThis research project is from a graduate class that I took, CPRE 5630, taught by Dr. Mai Zheng. In this class was a single research project due at the end. Throughout the class we also got introduced to research papers within the field and how to digest them, a first for me. My project features a paper and a demo that I had working. The concept is that lots of data that is collected and stored is quite small. For example, names, credit card numbers, addresses, ip, certain logs, transaction statements. Algorithms that are deployed today sometimgs need to add padding for the algorithm to run due to a minumum block size.
My goal was to build an algorithm that encrpyts data and outputs the exact same size, while also being fast enough for every piece of data to be encrypted individually. From this project I learned how to gather and collect data on current papers. Coming up with a novel implementation, and quantifying it. In the end, the algorithm was found to not be secure, but it did reach speeds faster then widely used algortihms at very low data count. The number of keys created would also grow linearly with the data, 2-3x the amount of storage needed. Overall this was a nice introduction to research and has made me interested in pursuing the masters. I enjoyed how the class was open to exploration.
Hardware Design Engineer Intern
Daktronics
January-August 2024 & Summer 2025
Qualified new module prototypes and caught problems resulting in new hardware revisions. Automated three FPGA dev environments that mapped into an internal Azure DevOps system. Designed a new cost-effective temperature sensor and wrote firmware code to support the chip. Implemented power saving features on LED CCDs for an eco-smart product line. Performed lab work with a spectroradiometer, EMI instruments, and temperature chambers.
At the end of my internships I got to present what I worked on which was fun to show to the other interns and people outside of my team.