Experience
All my experience can additionally be found on my LinkedIn profile: http://linkedin.com/in/connoralexandersmith
Virtual Reality Club at UCSD (Triton XR)
President (previously Vice-President)
December 2016 - June 2018 (President), June 2016 - December 2016 (VP)
http://vrclub.ucsd.edu, http://facebook.com/tritonxr
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gfvMy most rewarding experience at UC San Diego was undoubtedly serving as the President of the Virtual Reality Club at UCSD (now Triton XR). After joining the club during it's founding year (look lower on this page!), I eventually became the VP and then President and oversaw all aspects of the VR Club for over a year. During my time as President, the VR Club won "Outstanding Student Organization of the Year", the highest award possible for any student organization at UCSD. I grew the officer team from 7 students to 25 students, and introduced an entire committee system to help organize our ever-growing events and member-base. By the time I graduated, the VR Club had over 1000+ newsletter subscribers, over 250 active members, over 100 students actively involved in project development teams, and many more XR workshop and development resources that I created. We even launched our very own AR/VR/MR Hackathon, titled HackXR (see below!)
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HackXR
Organizer
March 2018
http://hackxr.io, https://hackxr.devpost.com/submissions
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I helped organize HackXR, UCSD's first ever VR/AR/MR exclusive Hackathon. The event was hosted by the Virtual Reality Club at UCSD, and since I was the President of the organization at the time, I played a role in hosting the event (huge shoutout to Anish Kannan, the Director of HackXR, who made it all happen!). We brought together our innovative community and provided all of the resources needed to create incredible XR projects in 36 hours. We offered VR & AR equipment, mentors, workshops, and expertise from our veteran hackers throughout the entire event (plus tons of free food, prizes, and swag, of course!). The event was also notably sponsored by Oculus, Vive, and Google.
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edX Course: Creating Virtual Reality (VR) Apps
Instructor
December 2016 - June 2018
https://www.edx.org/course/creating-virtual-reality-vr-apps
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I worked with fellow student Anish Kannan and Professor Jurgen Schulze to design and create an edX online VR course. I was responsible for teaching the projects portion of the course, which involved using the Unity Game Engine to build an interior design mobile VR application. I recorded tutorial videos, wrote quizzes, created assignments for students to complete, and overall guided the direction of the course. While the course was active during it's first run (and it's already been renewed for more), we had over 8000 student enrollments across the world, and saw over 700 active learners each week. At the time, this is the only VR development course available on the edX platform.
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Center for Cyber-Archaeology and Sustainability at UCSD
Software Developer
March 2016 - June 2018
http://ccas.ucsd.edu/
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For over two years, I led an undergraduate research team focused on developing a user-friendly, sustainable virtual reality system to load and display 3D cultural heritage data in virtual reality systems. Working under the supervision of the Campus Faculty Principal Investigator (Thomas Levy), Calit2 Co-Principal Investigator (Jurgen Schulze), and designated Graduate Student Researcher, we were able to create the software for a CAVEkiosk system, which was deployed to UCSD's Geisel Library. Our software downloaded archaeological data from an online database (shared between several UC campuses) and visualized it in a way that's exciting for public viewers and motivates them to browse archaeological sites. We created the software using the Unity Game Engine, and built it to run on 6 4K, 3D screens (in the orientation shown to the left of this picture). We also created an HTC Vive version of the project, which we took with us and presented at the 2017 ASOR Annual Meeting in Boston.
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Zynga
Software Engineer Intern
June 2016 - September 2016 & June 2017 - September 2017
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I worked on the Hit it Rich! mobile games team as a Unity Engineer Intern two summers in a row, 2016 & 2017. During both years, I created and optimized slot games using the Unity Game Engine and communicated across many different disciplines. More exciting, for my intern project I build a distributed automated test suite that was able to improve game test times by over 600%. I presented my work to executive staff and leadership on my team, and was even recommended by the CTO of the slots team for my final presentation and work while I was there (see my LinkedIn for the recommendation!).
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SD Hacks
VR Space Organizer & Corporate Outreach
October 2015 - October 2017
http://sdhacks.io
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SD Hacks is UCSD's premier 1000 person Hackathon. All three years of SD Hacks while I attended UCSD, myself and other members of the VR Club led VR workshops and provided 24/7 VR mentorship for any hacker working with VR technology. During the 2016 and 2017 events, we held record-breaking VR spaces at SD Hacks, which at the time were the largest VR spaces ever to exist at any Hackathon (complete with 10 HTC Vive spaces!) During the 2016 event, as a member of the SD Hacks organizer team, I was specifically responsible for corporate outreach. My job involved reaching out to companies regarding sponsorship, and ensuring SD Hacks is a successful event.
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Computer Science and Engineering Department at UCSD
Tutor
September 2015 - March 2018
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Winter 2018: 3D User Interaction (CSE165) with Dr. Jurgen Schulze
Fall 2016: Intro to Object-Oriented Programming (CSE11) with Rick Ord Spring 2016: Computer Org and Systems Programming (CSE30) with Rick Ord Winter 2016: Computer Org. and Systems Programming (CSE30) with Rick Ord Fall 2015: Intro to Object-Oriented Programming (CSE11) with Rick Ord More description coming soon! |
Virtual Reality Club at UCSD
Project Manager
October 2015 - June 2016
http://vrclub.ucsd.edu, http://facebook.com/tritonxr
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I joined the Virtual Reality Club at UCSD during it's founding year as one of the first officers to join the team, and managed all VR Club projects for the 2015-2016 school year. This role included managing 12 projects leads and teams, providing technical support for those teams, setting up and maintaining version control, and ultimately ensuring that VR Club project members had the resources, infrastructure, and leadership needed to create successful VR experiences.
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