Parker Conrad

    2021-PRESENT \\ PASSION PROJECT \\ BUNI SURFBOARD COMPANY

    \+ BUNI

    noun [U] buh • nee

    A wild, provocative, arguably dumb experiment of thought and action. An eco-focused surfboard manufacturing company I co-founded in the summer of 2021. Starting from nothing more than a simple idea, we have grown to a team of 10, with two factories in Oregon, and are on track to do over $50,000 in revenue this year.

    I was able to integrate my technical expertise into the company by standing up an award-winning, full-stack e-commerce website. The beta versions features an interactive 3D surfboard designer where users can customize and design their own boards. The production version of the site can be found here: www.buniboards.com

    I have been fortunate enough to manage all aspects of the company. This includes:

    • Daily Operations
    • Marketing
    • Finance
    • Business Logistics
    • Supply Chain Management
    • Legal


    2022-PRESENT \\ VOLUNTEER \\ DEVELOP FOR GOOD

    Develop For Good is a Bay Area based non-profit originating out of Stanford University. The organization connects traditionally unrepresented college students interested in programming and design with nonprofits to create socially impactful digital tools.

    \+ Winter 2023/24 Cohort - Product Manager - XtraMath

    XtraMath's mission is to make the tools for learning math available to everyone. Our vision is universal numeracy, half of UN Sustainable Development Goal 4.6 It is used by over 6.5 million students every year for daily math practice. As the Product Manager, I helped spearhead the creation of a Amazon Redshift and Glue DataWarehouse solution to aid in the nonprofit's reporting and integration needs of a growing business.

    \+ Winter 2021/2022 Cohort - Engineer - Environmental Defense Fund

    The Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) is a global nonprofit aimed at tacking climate change. The EDF identified an issue with a lack of response to environmental and pollution hazards due to a inaccessibility in reporting these hazards. I worked as a full-stack engineer to develop a ReactJS/Flask application to properly report these issues.



    2023 \\ INDUSTRY \\ SAFETY CRITICAL TOOLING

    \+ Daimler Truck North America - Software Engineering

    This project exists as a request from Design Engineering for a centralized way to track safety critical tools. Due to quality issues, recalls, and Corporate Audits, modules the are critical to the safety of the vehicle (ex. Brakes, Steering, Power- net) are denoted “DS” or Safety Critical. The most important of these is Torque. This is because many of the safety-related recall issues stem from torque problems such as improper torque, mis-builds, or loose/missing fasteners.

    As a result of this issue, I designed and implemented a full-stack React/.NET 8 Web Application with CRUD operations and user authentication and authorization.

    2023 \\ INDUSTRY \\ LEVEL SENSOR INTEGRATION

    \+ Daimler Truck North America - Controls & Automation Engineering

    On our manufacturing floor, there are a collection of totes with various fluids. This includes power steering fluid, oil, transmission fluid, and other liquids the trucks require to operate. Before this project, there was no way to tell the current level of these totes. Operators would only find out when they went to dispense the respective fluid, and nothing would come out.

    Initially, I was given a Keyence FL series level sensor to take to my team’s lab and develop a proof of concept. Once that was completed, I worked with maintenance technicians at the plant to get the probe cut to the size of a power steering fluid tote and then installed. After that, I integrated the sensor into the plant's automation network and SCADA system that the control’s engineering team uses and created a live pop-up that displays the level and presents a trend graph of the tote’s level history. If it gets too low, an alarm is triggered, and the proper point of contacts receive an email letting them know.



    2021-2023 \\ INDUSTRY \\ ODOT TOCS

    \+ Oregon State University - Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) - Developer

    Led a team of 5 student developers through a 2 year redevelopment of ODOT's Transportation Operations Center System (TOCS). The goal of the application was to providing a single, regional point of contact for 24x7 monitoring of transportation system operations and coordination of transportation related communications and services among internal and external customers.

    Additionally, TOCS is able to:

    • Enhance ODOT field crew safety during remote tasks, reducing incident duration and improving response times.
    • Manage information and communication functions, dispatching for maintenance and coordinating with emergency services.
    • Provide accurate traveler information through systems like TripCheck and 511, and promptly notify the public of impactful events.
    • Maintain readiness, document activities, manage contacts, and offer operational support through intelligent tools for field operations.


    We were able to successfully decouple the legacy application's monolithic architecture and leverage microservices, enhancing system scalability and reduce downtime by 50%. This was done through a tech stack of .NET6, .NET Framework 4.8, Apache ActiveMQ, SignalR, and GraphQL. The front-end was completely redesigned and implemented in VueJS, TypeScript, GoldenLayout, and AG Grid. This immensely improved application usability and functionality.



    2023 \\ RESEARCH \\ AUTONOMOUS CAR TRAJECTORY & CONTROL

    \+ GFR - Autonomous Systems Engineering

    Global Formula Racing is a partnership between Oregon State University and the Duale Hochschule Baden-Wurttemberg Ravensburg. Each year the team designs and manufactures two high performance electric formula style vehicles, to compete in Formula SAE in North America and Formula Student in Europe.

    I was responsible for the optimization of the Trajectory Planning and Control subsystem on the autonomous vehicle. The subsystem involves the development of algorithms that take into account the car's current position, velocity, and orientation, as well as the track layout. The trajectory planning component of this subsystem determines the path the car should follow. The control component of the subsystem is responsible for executing the planned trajectory by adjusting the steering angle and speed in real-time. The goal of the control component is to maintain minimum deviation of the reference trajectory while achieving maximum speed with respect to minimum lap time.

    Through development in ROS, C++, YoloV4, and ForcesPro, I was able to design and implement several controls algorithims and improve lap time by 50%.



    2022 \\ CLASS PROJECT \\ SHAPE N' SURF
    Buni Shape n' Surf exists as the all-in-one suite for Surfboard Builders. Users are able to select and save surf spots around the world through the Google Maps API, then either view a real-time surf forecast, lookahead into the upcoming month, or view the last year's worth of surf data—all through the Open-Meteo Marine Weather API. For the surfboard shaping side of the application, if a user finds a surfboard they would like to recreate they can visit the "Shape Board" page where they can either take a picture of a board or upload it from their phone. A TensorFlow Lite Machine Learning Model was trained by our team for surfboard image recognition. If it really was a board that the user took a picture of, the user can then enter the size of the board they would like. Our OpenCV implementation finds the outline of the board, splits it in half, and divides it into slices that fit on a standard 8.5"x11" piece of paper. From there, the user can save the board and print the pdf generated by ITextPdf. Just like that, the user is ready to make a surfboard!

    2022 \\ INDUSTRY \\ TOOL READINESS NEXT

    \+ Thermo Fisher Scientific - Software Engineering

    Tool Readiness exists to align and calibrate the microscope and to ensure it provides high resolution images and accurate metrology. With the constantly evolving needs of consumers, software engineering philosopies, and the current state of techonology, TR Next was needed as a replacement to the existing TR. With it comes a set of services and a comprehensive, easy to use User Interface. I was responsible for creating most of the pages on our web application, along with the logic behind it. The tech stack for the appliation was .NET6, Blazor, and gRPC.