About Me
My name is Kyle J. Summers and I am an engineering student, web developer, and entrepreneur, yet the division between these identities is often blurred and undefined (certainly NaN).
Experience
Barracuda Networks
During the summer of 2012, I interned as a Software Engineer at Barracuda Networks in Campbell, California. Barracuda provides a range of anti-spam, firewall, and file backup solutions for mid-size to enterprise businesses. During my internship, I worked heavily on the user interface of the Spam and Anti-Virus Firewall product. I added and improved functionality to make product configuration much more accessible for users.
Student
As of September 2012, I will be a fourth-year undergraduate at the University of Michigan, studying Computer Science in the College of Engineering and pursuing a minor in Spanish Language, Literature, and Culture.
Research
I have served as a research assistant for projects involving web application development. During the summer of 2011, I worked as a Web Application Developer for the Michigan Interactive & Social Computing research group at the School of Information, where I contributed to the Rumors project.
The project was designed to analyze tweets on Twitter to determine whether or not they appear to be rumors and to provide users with feedback on the legitimacy of information, including sources that correct misinformation. The project is focused on political rumors. I developed a Firefox browser extension designed to color code tweets in one's Twitter timeline based on whether or not an algorithm (server-side) determines that they are rumor-like.
Previous to working for the School of Information, I was a web developer working on a research project that resulted in the Mobile Participation System. This system was created by Ari Chivukula and myself and is a software-based student response system for use by universities. I co-authored a paper on this system, which won the John A. Curtis Lecture Award for the best paper in the Computers in Education Division at the 118th ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition.
Michigan Hackers
In February of 2012, I co-founded Michigan Hackers, a student organization at the University of Michigan. I served as Vice President of Operations from April 2012 to January 2013. My friends and I saw a void in the fabric of the EECS community at U-M and founded Michigan Hackers to foster the hacker culture on campus. The organization hosts tech talks, hackathons, weekly Hack Nights, among other events. In February of 2013, Michigan Hackers co-hosted MHacks, the largest student-run hackathon in the country, which had more than 500 students attend from across the U.S. and Canada.
Student Government
During the 2011-2012 academic year, I served as the Chief of Staff of the Central Student Government. I worked toward the efficient management and effective use of information and resources, while using technology to increase the organization's effectiveness. One of the IT projects is UPetition, which is an online petition service that I created for use within the University of Michigan community. The service has been used by over 14,000 individuals.
Hackathons
Facebook Camp Hackathon — April 2011
In March 2011, I had an awesome time participating in Facebook's Camp Hackathon at the University of Michigan with Brian Ford, Sharon Lee and Andrew Robinson. After 24 hours of programming (and the occasional RipStick joy ride), our team won the grand prize at the Michigan competition with a Facebook application we created called Social Jam. Social Jam allows Facebook users to create music with their friends. In December 2011, we went on to the Hackathon Finals at Facebook's (then) headquarters in Palo Alto, CA. There we competed against teams from across the U.S. and Canada.
Facebook Hackathon Finals — December 2011
After my team won first place at Facebook's Camp Hackathon at Michigan, we went to their Palo Alto headquarters in December 2011. There we competed against about 14 other universities across the U.S. and Canada in the Hackathon Finals. Our team developed another Facebook app based off of the classic Guess Who game, which provided an interface through which to play Guess Who with another Facebook user from one's set of mutual friends. It presented some of Facebook's Social Graph data about each user to encourage questions about those characteristics, with the hope that game players might have the opportunity to learn a bit more about their Facebook friends.
Greylock Hackfest — July 2012
In July 2012, I participated in Greylock's Hackfest. There I hacked solo to build an application to facilitate virtual programming office hours. My thought was that office hours for programming courses are fairly low-tech, consisting of a graduate student instructor (or "TA" at many universities) being available in a computer lab where students use a whiteboard as a queueing system for help with their project questions.
I built a browser-based code review application that consists of the open-source Ace text editor library written in JavaScript. It syncs interactions with the code — mouse movements, cursor movements, selection of text, insertions and deletions — between the instructor and student. My ultimate goal was to incorporate video/text chat and seamless file handling. The file handling would consist of integration with the Dropbox API (and/or Google Drive or Box) for near real-time synchronizations of code being edited in a client-side editor/IDE and the app. Diffs of the code between file saves that are picked up by the storage services could be made available through the app. It would also use HTML5 drag-and-drop file upload as an alternative to using Dropbox, et al. I plan to continue developing this hack and put it in use for students at U-M.
Web Development
I began teaching myself about web technologies when I was 11. Since then I've worked on several freelance, personal and research projects. I am knowledgable with the following technologies: XHTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, MySQL, Linux and Apache. jQuery is my JavaScript library of choice. I am generally quite good at making things functional, but not always aesthetically pleasing — I'm working on that, though. I think Paul Irish's HTML5 Boilerplate system is pretty cool.
Contact Me
You can contact me via email at kjs@kylejsummers.com or call me. You can also connect with me elsewhere online.
Colophon
This webpage is based on the HTML5 Boilerplate by Paul Irish, et al. It uses jQuery for the photo effect and jQuery UI for the click-to-call dialog. The font for the headings is Crimson Text, available via the Google Web Fonts API. Body text is set in Arial. The background pattern is Vichy from Subtle Patterns. HTML5 Logo by W3C.