My Experience

  • Qualcomm
    Modem Software Engineer
  • Virginia Polytechnic Institute
    Computer Engineering Major, Mathematics Minor
  • Undergraduate Research with Dr. C. Jules White
    Algorithm Developer
  • Independent Study with Dr. Tom Martin
    Product Developer
  • Fashion Show
    Hardware/Software Engineer
  • Undergraduate Honor System
    Associate Justice, Web Application Developer

Qualcomm

The Spotlight

Pocket Talk: Read text messages aloud, or vibrate them in Morse code.

Pocket Talk is an open source (GNU GPL v3) Android application that reads text messages as they arrive. The application can be configured to read the messages aloud, or vibrate them in Morse code. If the messages are vibrated in Morse code, the speed of the vibration is configurable. The goal of the application was to straddle the line between useful and silly, so people wouldn't know what my motivation was. I'm still not going to tell you.
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Notable Projects

24, an automatic solver to a popular math puzzle

Audiovisual Display, A circuit designed for an HKN competition. The entry placed third and was presented to the department head.

Cannon, an Android-controlled pneumatic cannon powered By Arduino

Ecémon, a Pokémon-inspired Verilog project featuring ECE faculty at Virginia Tech

Graph Theory, a demonstration of Dijkstra's breadth-first search algorithm

Grid, a simplified drawing program

Interview Questions, a collection of my favorite interview questions I've encountered since 2007

Location, an example of geolocation in Javascript

Maintenance, a placeholder page made for Koofers.com

Math, a collection of scripts related to discrete math

Password Generator, a secure password generator written in Javascript

Pocket Talk, an open source (GNU GPL v3) Android application that reads text messages aloud and vibrates them in Morse Code

POV, a message generator for the MiniPOV3 kit

Quarternote, a video describing Quarternote, an Android music player designed to work in a car

Speed Test, a typing speed test

Statistics, a demonstration of hypothesis testing set to the tune of Pyotr Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture

Syncrod, a paper about an energy-minimization method for distributed file synchronization algorithms. The paper debuted at PECCS 2012.

WebBlaze, a web interface to program a Xilinx S3E board [offline]

XStitch, a program that converts any image into cross-stitch patterns

Zip Code, a RESTful interface to JSON zip code data given latitude and longitude. Database adapted from Boutell.

Real Life

Zach is one of the most talented and intelligent colleagues I have ever met.

- Matthew Hughes, Associate Chief Justice at the Virginia Tech Undergraduate Honor System

profile for Zach Rattner at Stack Overflow