# David Kooi > Research and Software Engineer at Dirac Solutions | Visiting Specialist UCSC Location: Santa Cruz, California, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/davidkooi Interested in: Medical robotics, autonomous systems, safety critical control. Master's Thesis: A Self-Triggered Control Strategy for Forward Invariance ## Work Experience ### Visiting Assistiant Specialist @ Baskin Engineering at UCSC Jan 2024 – Present ### Research and Software Engineer @ Dirac Solutions Jan 2022 – Present ### Embedded Software Engineer @ Opener Jan 2021 – Jan 2022 ### Graduate Student Researcher @ UCSC Baskin School of Engineering Jan 2018 – Jan 2021 Research in safety critical event/self triggered control strategies, motion planning using MPC, A*, minimum jerk, run-time verification of temporal logic specifications. ### Teacher Assistant for Undergraduate Senior Design @ UCSC Baskin School of Engineering Jan 2019 – Jan 2020 ### Project Mentor @ UCSC Baskin School of Engineering Jan 2019 – Jan 2019 Led a team of high-schoolers to reconstruct the PacMan game-state using computer vision and demonstrated real-time control of PacMan using multi-mode control and potential functions. ### Teacher Assistant for Undergraduate Senior Design @ UCSC Baskin School of Engineering Jan 2018 – Jan 2019 Manage and assist student teams during capstone project sequence. ### Intern - Requirements Engineering Researcher @ NASA Ames Research Center Jan 2019 – Jan 2019 Worked with the Robust Software engineering group on developing formal verification tools. Developed and proved a compositional testing approach. Used model checking techniques to test, analyze, and document realizability of formal flight requirements ### Flight Software Developer @ NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory Jan 2018 – Jan 2018 | United States Worked within the Autonomous Systems Division for the Mars 2020(M2020) Vision Compute Element(VCE). The VCE will perform terrain relative navigation during M2020's entry, decent and landing. During this summer I worked on flight software running on the VCE computer. My tasks involved: - Creating a static source code analyzer to auto-code a binary image representing the on-board parameter structure. - Creating a memory mapping auto-coder taking as input memory segment specifications and outputing flight verified C code. - Extending the memory mapping auto-coder to support bad-page remapping. ### Automated Stockpile Moving: Experimental Validation of a Vision-Based Front Loader @ UCSC Baskin School of Engineering Jan 2017 – Jan 2018 Senior Design Project sponsored and supported by the Topcon Corporation Objective: Use a computer vision to locate and traverse to a stockpile; use stereo cameras to calculate an optimal approach vector; fill bucket and verify fill; maneuver to dump site; return and repeat. Responsibilities: Software architecture, Stereo Camera and point-cloud processing, trajectory calculation. ### UCSC Mechatronics @ UCSC Baskin School of Engineering Jan 2017 – Jan 2017 | Santa Cruz We developed the mechanical and electronic hardware; and event driven software, necessary to complete a series of tasks within a variable environment. Highlights include: - Motion profiling for complex maneuvering - Feedback control for line following - Real-time digital signal processing - Analog signal conditioning and power distribution circuitry ### Application and Flight Software Developer @ NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory Jan 2017 – Jan 2017 | Pasadena Worked in the Autonomous Systems Division under the Small Scale Flight Software group. Work was performed within the NASA JPL FPrime flight software framework. Worked through a full design cycle to rebuild the a ground support server using Python ZeroMQ middleware to support a dynamic, many-many ‘publish-subscribe’ communication topology. Server features ‘pluggable’ packet protocol translation. Developed a C++ ‘ZmqRadio’ component enabling robust communication between embedded systems and the new server. ### Application and Flight Software Developer @ NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory Jan 2016 – Jan 2016 | Pasadena, CA Worked in the Autonomous Systems Division under the Small Scale Flight Software group. - Developed and maintained the FPrime Ground Support Equipment software framework. - Created a UI and API for FPrime File Uplink/Downlink utilizing cFTP like file packets. - Created real-time telemetry visualization handling multiple channels. - Created a stand-alone FPrime Telemetry Packet Editor application. - Implemented other enhancements such as window state persistence and bug fixes. ### Tutor @ Cuesta College Jan 2015 – Jan 2016 | San Luis Obispo, California Area Tutor in Software Development, OOP, Data Structures, and Calculus. ### Application Developer @ NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory Jan 2015 – Jan 2015 | Pasadena, California Worked in the Autonomous Systems Division under the Small Scale Flight Software group. - Tested and debugged a model based flight software code generator written in Python that generates C++ code. - Wrote a multi-level testing suite that tested code generation, configuration file parsing, C++ building and runtime performance. - Refactored a portion of the code generator to fix a design inconsistency. ### Educational Outreach Event Organizer @ Citizens Climate Lobby Jan 2015 – Jan 2015 | San Luis Obispo Team member for a local Citizen's Climate Lobby chapter in San Luis Obispo County. Organized two events on Climate Change awareness. Had the opportunity to be a panel member for a New Tech High School event on Sustainable Development. ### Software Development Volunteer @ Running Warehouse Jan 2015 – Jan 2015 | San Luis Obispo, California Worked with the image processing division to create a web application that automated a manual employee process. Primary work done with the PHP backend to support MySQL operations. ## Education ### Master's degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering Baskin Engineering at UCSC ### Bachelors Degree in Computer Engineering Baskin Engineering at UCSC ### Student in Computer Science Cuesta College ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/david-kooi - Portfolio: https://davidkooi.pythonanywhere.com --- Source: https://flows.cv/davidkooi JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/davidkooi/resume.json Last updated: 2026-04-11