Brendan Doms

Employment

Mod Four

A web program start up business, Mod Four was founded by me and three friends who are all fellow class of 2007 members from Olin. I worked on it full time during the summer of '06 in Sommerville, MA, and am still working on it while at school. We've released our first website, Shopkick.com, a site where people can share what they know about products and go shopping online. Go check it out!

Along with being one of the Founders and the Executive Vice President for the business, I do a lot of hard technical work. I did design and implementation for two very complex pieces of JavaScript: the Guide Creator (our page creation tool that uses drag and drop and rich text editing) and the Bookmarklet (a way to add items to our site while browsing other sites). I also wrote Python scripts that crawled and screen scraped our affiliate sites to add and update information about items in our database. The whole site is a complex web application that I am still working on by adding more features and fixing bugs.

Olin College

I was employed by my school as a Course Assistant for the class "Human Factors and Interface Design" during the fall semester of 2006. In addition to doing secretarial work and helping with student user testing, I also answered some students' questions about design, helped students debug and troubleshoot software prototypes, and gave occassional presentations or advice on topics such as the pros and cons of various prototyping technologies.

Magenic Technologies

My internship in a real software consulting firm took place at Magenic's headquarters in Golden Valley, MN during the summer of 2005. I learned the industry ins and outs while gaining valuable experience working at a medium sized company and using UML diagrams. Magenic is a Microsoft centered business, and was actually named as one of the Microsoft partners of the year for 2005. I primarily worked on developing and improving internal projects for them using the .NET languages, but I also designed some webpages for charity work the company was doing for some nonprofits.

Kroll Ontrack

I worked at Kroll's headquarters in Eden Prairie, MN during the summer of 2004. My job title was that of "Drone Monitor," which essentially meant that I had to watch computers and make sure they didn't mess up or stop what they were doing. The computers themselves were churning through tons of data provided for Kroll's Electronic Discovery section. I had to ensure that they continued to convert documents of all file types into TIFFs. In order to do so, I monitored up to four workstations at once, and occasionally had to use Kroll's proprietary software to hack password protected documents. I learned a lot about document security, file formats, and conversions in my time there.

Dominion Technologies

The first business or job I was ever involved in. Along with three friends, I founded Dominion Technologies on February 22, 1999, while I was still in 8th grade. We specialized in "dynamic website design" for small, local businesses close to Chanhassen, MN. At the time, this meant a healthy dose of frames and little standards compliance, but we successfully completed several projects and got paid for them. We became more knowledgable and handy with tools such as Photoshop and Flash, while learning how to interact and communicate with our clients. We all shared management duties, and my personal responsibility was for coding HTML and what little Javascript we might have on the page.

In 2002 the other three founders graduated from high school and left for three separate colleges, so the company itself dissolved. However, we as a group of web savvy friends survived, and started a place for ourselves at Doom Triangle, a page named after our company's logo.

Education

Undergraduate

I am currently a senior at the Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering in Needham, MA, pursuing my Bachelor of Science degree in Engineering with a concentration in Computing. Olin is a brand new school that emphasizes a "do-learn" approach to teaching engineering, while focusing on multi-disciplinary aspects like design and business. It also provides a full tuition scholarship to every admitted student. As a member of the class of 2007, I will be in the second class to ever graduate from the school, and in the first to graduate from it while accredited.

Olin has been honored with several awards and consistently ranks high on the Princeton Review. Included in these is being named one of the 25 New Ivies by Newsweek and one of the top design schools by Business Week.

High School

My high school education was completed when I received my diploma from Breck School in Golden Valley, MN. I graduated with honors as a member of the class of 2003. While there, the national honors bestowed on me included being inducted into the Cum Laude Society, becoming an AP Scholar with Distinction, and winning a National Merit Scholarship. At the school level, I received the Mathematics Department Distinction Award, the Science Award of Excellence, and the Service to the School Award. I received varsity letters in both Track and Field and Drama.

Research

During the summer of 2002 I did research at the University of Minnesota in the Department of Biochemistry, Molecular Biology, and Biophysics. I examined the relationship between the protein metallothionein 3 and metal ion concentrations (notably zinc, copper, and aluminum) in mouse brains pertaining to Alzheimer's Disease. The paper that I helped start regarding that research was eventually published. And, the presentation I gave on that research in the form of a poster session landed me the Intel Excellence in Environmental Science Award, the Society for In Vitro Biology Award, the US Army Award, and the 3M Foundation Corporate Sponsor Award. I was also selected by the Twin Cities Regional Science Fair to be one of their representatives as a finalist at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, which I attended in Cleveland, OH in 2003.

Theater

My theater career began in 7th grade when I auditioned for my middle school's rendition of Krazy Kamp. Knowing I couldn't dance, sing, or act, I was surprised to be given a part, even if it was meager. Encouraged, and with a little bit more experience under my belt, I came back the next year and scored the lead role in Westward, Whoa. By the time I got to high school I had become a total thespian, going on to play Chino in West Side Story, Mr. Mog Edwards in Under Milkwood, a part of the ensemble in The Pirates of Penzance, Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet while simultaneously Assistant Directing it, Commander Harbison in South Pacific, part of the ensemble in The Matchmaker and simultaneously playing Dr. Chasuble in The Importance of Being Ernest while Directing it. Of special significance is West Side Story, which won my high school the 2000 Spotlight award for "Overall Production of a Musical." I am continuing to look into acting and directing opportunities still, though my tendencies are leaning more towards film, the history of which you can learn more about on the movies page.

Writing

I have been writing poetry since the beginning of high school, and short prose since about a year before that. There now exists quite a large number of poems that I have written, one of which was published in my high school's literary magazine Ars Nova, two of which were published in my college's literary magazine In Decent Exposure, and two of which were published in the GenderiZine of Massachusetts. Most of the time my poetry covers my dorm room, but if there's anyone out there who wants to take a look at it or potentially publish more of it, let me know.

As for prose, I've been trying to write a novel since 1997, but I've never gotten more than a couple chapters in. I have much better luck with short prose in various forms. I have written two unfilmed short movie scripts, one unperformed one act play, and several short stories, one of which could be performed as a monologue. I would really like my movie scripts to be filmed by me or someone else, and I'd also like to see my play get produced or my short stories published.

2D Art

My favorite form of 2D art is digital photo-manipulation. I've made half a dozen computer wallpapers that can be seen on my deviantART page.