About Me

Experience

Activities

Contact

Welcome!

"The destiny of world civilization depends upon providing a decent standard of living for all mankind."

Norman Borlaug

About Me

Hello, and welcome to my website! My name is Neil Davis, and I'm a software engineer at Microsoft in the Commerical Sales and Marketing division. I received my B.S. in Computer Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and received a M.S. in Computer Science through UNC's accelerated Master's program. Ever since I was little, I have been fascinated by the limitless possibilities of the computer. I was and still am motivated to learn as much about computer science as possible and to make an impact for the greater good using technology.

My time at UNC-Chapel Hill has given me greater exposure to computer science and how to use it to better the world. Through my time as a research assistant, I created computer games for visually impaired children for our Computer Science Department's annual Maze Day and created simulations to test airborne networks. I founded the organization CS+Social Good-UNC through the TechShift Alliance to foster an environment to be more thoughtful about how technology can and should be used for the greater good. In addition to my involvement with computer science, I became increasingly interested in international development and human rights through my time with UNC's Model United Nations organization, CIRA, as well as through my International Relations and World History lectures. I also became more involved in uplifting members in the Chapel Hill community who faced financial difficulties as an Advocate at the Community Empowerment Fund.

Through those activities and classes, I became more aware of the hardships and struggles developing countries and their citizens have experienced to this day. I became inspired to use my degree in Computer Science to enter international development. I want to explore how technology can improve our world, beginning with the advancement of Internet infrastructures in developing countries to improve the standard of living of all people. I believe that strong Internet infrastructures will empower developing countries and their citizens, and I am determined to accomplish that goal.

Experience

  • Education
    • The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
    • Master's of Science, Computer Science (Class of 2018)
    • Bachelor's of Science, Computer Science (Class of 2017)
    • GPA (Out of 4.00): 3.67
    • Carolina Honors Laureate
    • University College London, Fall 2015
  • Skills
    • Java
    • Node.js
    • Python
    • C#
    • Web Development
    • Full-Stack Development
    • Bot Development
    • Agile Development
    • Azure
    • HTML
    • CSS
  • Software Engineer, Commerical Sales & Marketing at Microsoft, June 2018 - Present
    • Developing new component to track potential commercial customers.
    • Implemented Stateless API’s to send messages to downstream components and update external information.
    • Scrum Master - Oversees the completion of User Stories in a sprint and organizes end-of-sprint retrospectives to improve on previous work.
    • Contributes features to support "leads" from MSX.
    • Developing functionality to support GDPR compliance on the platform.
    • Manages implementation of telemetry across the team’s services to track events and failures in our services.
  • Research Assistant OSCAR, UNC, Aug. 2017 - May 2018
    • Implementing 'Sinter' software to improve visually impaired programmers' work.
    • Moving over research projects over to Jenkins server to improve automation and workflow.
  • Senior Extreme Blue Technical Intern, IBM, May 2017 - Aug. 2017
    • Developed a Slackbot to encourage modern developer habits among developers at IBM, specifically using code reviews on GitHub (sponsored by IBM Whitewater.
    • In charge of developing the conversation flow between the user and the bot using Node.js and Botkit as well as collecting information from user's pull requests on GitHub for analysis.
    • Medium Article
    • IBM NA Twitter
  • Research Assistant, UNC, Jan. 2016 - May 2017
    • Research involves testing simulations that form a large mesh network between airplanes.
    • Potential to cast WiFi down on the ground and cover the United States.
  • Open Service for Lifecycle Collaboration - Software Engineering Intern, IBM, May 2016 - Dec. 2016
    • Programmed the middleware applications for the OSLC and LDP layers based on their respective specfications using Node.js and Express.js.
    • Developed OSLC and LDP API’s with Swagger.io using YAML.
    • Reformated database of OSLC platform from MongoDB to Apache Jena - Fuseki.
  • Rational Developer for z Systems - Software Engineering Intern, IBM, May 2015 - Sept. 2015
    • Developed for Rational Developer for z Systems (RDz) using Java and Eclipse.
    • Priority was to repair JUnit testers to advance testing automation, as well as resolve defects for the IDE.
    • Conducted a four week study on the code coverage of RDz's JUnit testers on their respective target code.
  • Research Assistant, UNC, May 2014 - May 2015
    • Developed customizable computer games for children with disabilities.
    • Three versions: two in Python and Pygame (switch users, visually impaired) and one in JavaScript and the Quintus engine (visually impaired).
    • Version in JavaScript, "Arithiga," displayed at Maze Day 2015.

Activities

  • Antydote
    • Messenger bot that reports the toxicity of users’ messages using Google Jigsaw’s Perspective API using Botkit.
    • Developed as a hackathon project at HackNC.
  • Tutmonda
    • Designed and developed simple news aggregator website (https://www.tutmonda.news).
    • Backend in Python using IBM's Alchemy API and Flask and frontend using AngularJS.
  • Mentor, TechShift Alliance
    • Mentor for CS+Social Good at the University of Deleware.
    • Provides resources and advice for the organization to thrive.
  • Founder, CS+Social Good-UNC
    • Founded CS+Social Good-UNC through the (TechShift Alliance).
    • Directed executive board to set up infrastructure of the organization.
    • Had 20 official members and hosted three events by May 2018.
  • Senior Advocate, Community Empowerment Fund
    • Works with members of the community experiencing poverty to make members financial independent.
    • Includes finding information about job openings, building skills, looking for housing, etc.
    • Certified in finding alternative incomes and employment for a member's needs.
    • Certified in using The Benefit Bank to assist members filing their taxes.
    • Certified in finding affordable housing for members.
  • Lead Developer, Carolina Tech Explorers
    • Directed development of an Amazon Alexa application to set up an alarm clock for people with disabilities.
    • Alarm clock would output positive messages to the user when it went off.
  • Maze Day Game Designer
    • Developed two computer games for visually impaired children, "To The Middle" and "Arithiga."
    • "Arithiga" was developed through my position as a research assistant. More information can be found here.
  • Secretary-General, MUNCH, April 2014 - March 2015
    • Organized a Model United Nations conference for high school students, the Model United Nations at Chapel Hill, that was held March 2015 with a secretariat. Duties were to oversee the formation of committees, communicate with high schools, and coordinate with the Director-General on logistics along with the overall development of the conference. Ultimately, twenty-nine high schools and 404 students attended, making it the largest conference yet. More information about MUNCH can be found at here.
    • Served on the Executive Board for MUNCH's umbrella organization, the Carolina International Relations Association (CIRA), to further the organization as a whole. More information can be found here.
    • Managed the website for CIRA.

Contact

Thank you for taking the time to look at my website! If you would like more information from me, please contact me using the following:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/neilbdavis

GitHub: https://github.com/neilbd