Steven N. Severinghaus

Primary Skills

  • ColdFusion, PHP, JSP
  • SQL Server, MySQL
  • Scripting, Ant, CVS, Subversion
  • Apache, Weblogic, Linux
  • Java, PHP, UserRPL, and more

Professional Experience

9/2006 – Present: University of Illinois Extension

7/2002 – 9/2006: Illinois TRAILL, UIUC

  • Built the Illinois TRAILL website, a portal for experts at the University of Illinois to disseminate information on various extension and livestock topics. The site has about 1,500 registered users and 8,000 pieces of content published by fifty experts. Key technologies:
    • A large schema housed in a Microsoft SQL Server database, providing an extensible content tracking system
    • A sophisticated site structure based on ColdFusion components, custom tags, and includes
    • Flexible and accessible markup and stylesheets
    • Integration of new technologies, including podcasts, RSS feeds, and iCalendar subscriptions
    • Visit the site: http://www.traill.uiuc.edu/
  • Set up and customized an osCommerce store for Illinois TRAILL to sell class materials and other media for the Department of Animal Sciences. This project involved:
    • Customization of the PHP- and MySQL-based site to enable new functionality and provide some visual distinction from the default design
    • Implementation of a secure method for acquiring credit card information and passing it to the University's payment processing center
    • Visit the site: http://store.traill.uiuc.edu/
  • Collaborated with a graphic designer to create the Animal Sciences website. The site is a mixture of static and dynamic content, the latter including a staff database, room reservation system, and news publishing system.
    • A site structure based on accessible XHTML and CSS, ColdFusion components, custom tags, and includes, that is intended to be usable by people with only a moderate knowledge of web development
    • An authentication and authorization scheme based on Active Directory and LDAP
    • Visit the site: http://www.ansci.uiuc.edu/
  • A variety of photographic projects, including:
    • Formal portrait photography for about 150 graduate and undergraduate students in the Department of Animal Sciences
    • Photography for sale at the TRAILL Store
    • Other imagery for both online and print publications, samples of which are available either upon request or at my website

4/2002 – 2003: Web Technology Group, UIUC

  • Built a templated website for the Office of Continuing Education that allowed people unfamiliar with web publication to easily create new content. This involved several technologies:
    • A sophisticated but easy-to-use Dreamweaver template that provided a consistent navigation framework while allowing customization of look and feel
    • Design of a ColdFusion- and Microsoft SQL Server-backed hierarchical menu system and an accompanying administration interface
    • Visit the site: http://www.continuinged.uiuc.edu/outreach/
  • Began work on the Illinois TRAILL web portal, then based on DynaPortal, and moved to work directly for TRAILL shortly after taking over responsibility for all development on the project

5/2000 – 1/2002: MedExpert International, Inc.

  • Designed and implemented the database access layer for a multi-tier enterprise application. Key concepts and technologies involved:
    • Layout of a source code repository housed in CVS
    • Implementation of a build and deployment system based on Apache's Ant build system (a Java and XML makefile system)
    • Design and coding of a series of Enterprise Java Beans to layer over an Oracle database
    • Deployment of EJBs and J2EE web applications to BEA's Weblogic Server
  • Helped design and implement a system to load 30GB of medical citations in XML format into an Oracle database. Key concepts and technologies involved:
    • Experimentation with several different XML parsers and XSLT engines (using both the DOM and SAX APIs) to streamline the process
    • Proficiency with JDBC, particularly in relation to Oracle databases, including experience with the several different driver configurations available
    • Use of Oracle-specific XML utilities (including the XML SQL Utility)
    • Writing a set of shell scripts to automate the loading process
  • Worked with a small team to design and implement an integrated set of simple, complete web applications. Key concepts and technologies involved:
    • Layout and management of a CVS code repository
    • Implementation of an Ant-based build and deployment system
    • Designing tables for Oracle and MySQL databases to represent a complex data set
    • A simple mid-tier composed of servlets and Java Beans
    • Frontend work with Java Server Pages, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript
    • Deployment to and administration of Tomcat (for dynamic content) and Apache (for static content)

10/1998 – 5/2000: Corps of Engineers Research Lab

  • Designed and implemented a web frontend for a package that models effects of military smokes and obscurants on threatened and endangered species. I presented a paper (available upon request) on this project at the ESRI International User Conference in 2000. Key concepts and technologies involved:
    • Use of ESRI's Internet Map Server to generate map images and perform spatial analysis, with the server-side components implemented largely in Visual Basic
    • Programming a graphical Java applet as a client to render maps and provide real-time interactivity
    • General CGI programming in several contexts throughout the prototyping phase, including shell scripting, servlets, and Visual Basic
    • View the abstract: http://gis.esri.com/library/userconf/proc00/professional/abstracts/a502.htm
  • Prototyped an interactive map repository for the Marine Corps base in 29 Palms, CA. Key concepts and technologies involved:
    • Designing and implementing an attractive HTML interface to integrate cleanly with an existing web site
    • Building an interactive, graphical Java applet to preview, navigate, and print maps

Non-Professional Experience

Projects

  • Volunteer work with the community radio station WEFT Champaign 90.1FM, including a complete reimplementation of their website with a modern content management system.
  • Collaborated with a small team to bring a local history teacher's innovative curriculum online: The Flow of History.
  • Implemented two fairly popular modules for the Gallery2 photo gallery system. The first allowed users to view a chronological list of updates to the gallery (see it in action). The second used Google Maps to plot the locations that photographs were taken based on GPS data supplied by the gallery administrator (see it in action). This project required facility with MySQL, PHP, and the Smarty templating engine.
  • Collaborated with a small team of students to produce BFG, a half virtual, half physical, team-based game featured at the 2004 opening of the Siebel Center at the University of Illinois. Each member of the team was commended at the Computer Science department's year-end awards ceremony.

    I also participated in developing a fire dynamics simulation for the follow-up course, BFG: Firefighting Edition. This project relied heavily on Trac and Subversion.

  • Worked with a small group from 1997 through 1998 to develop Java software to help teach Japanese. This included flashcard software for the syllabary and a software dictionary with roughly 2,000 ideographs. Key concepts and technologies involved:
    • Thorough knowledge of the Java Abstract Windowing Toolkit and the 1.0 and 1.1 GUI event models
    • Experience laying out and building non-web-based graphical interfaces
  • Built a Java application to render fractals and other recursively-defined mathematical objects based on Lindenmayer Systems. Key concepts and technologies involved:
    • Thorough knowledge of the Java Foundation Classes and Swing architecture (including the Model-View-Controller paradigm and the 1.2 event model)
    • Experience with the Java 2D API, specifically areas related to vector-based graphics

Education

  • Graduated from the University High School in Champaign-Urbana in 1998. There I studied Russian for four years (continued at UIUC for two semesters) and Japanese for one year.
  • Completed a BA in Mathematics and Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in August, 2006.
Last updated 2007-06-20.