Daniel Morris is a force to be reckoned with, y’all. Not only is Morris currently wrapping up his degree in computer science from Rhodes College, he’s also taking an online machine learning course at Stanford (yes, that Stanford). When he’s off the field, you can find Morris developing his own website or tutoring fellow computer science peers. This ace is ready to close the books and hit a home run with a job in an Atlanta startup, so catch him while you can.
Current Role:
I’m currently pursuing a major in computer science and a minor in business and commerce at Rhodes College. I am expecting to graduate in May of 2016.
What startup/tech project have you worked on?
Last summer, I worked at FedEx headquarters in Memphis, TN, as a programmer analyst. Another intern and I developed a web application that connected FedEx dropbox locations to customer locations. The application would list the three closest dropbox locations given a customer zip code. We developed the application using Visual Basic and SQL. In order for the run time to decrease, we implemented a heuristic that only looked for dropboxes within 100 square miles instead of looking at every single dropbox. This decreased the run time from several hours to two to three minutes.
In the summer of 2014, I worked at Dragon Army, a gaming startup founded by Jeff Hilimire, in Atlanta, GA. I created a dashboard, using an open source Framework called Dashing on GitHub. The dashboard showed potential investors the different applications that Dragon Army had created, the number of downloads of each application, and the amount of revenue of each application. Within the framework, I used API’s to accumulate all of this data in one place. The framework was based off Ruby.
I’ve also served as a tutor for computer science at my college. I’ve helped students understand different algorithms as well as syntax, walking students through step-by-step instructions on why they are getting certain outputs and how to fix their programs.
What tech/tools are essential to you?
I’m a big fan of Eclipse. I use a lot of the keyboard shortcuts in order to code faster. However, Google is my most essential tool as every day I’m learning something new from the online community.
How do you stay informed & on top of emerging trends?
I like to read a lot. I’m currently reading The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver. It discusses how to find meaningful data in a world of Big Data. I also keep up with Entrepreneur magazine and the news.
What are your best technical or creative skills?
My best technical skills are coding in Java and Python. I am also pretty good with SQL.
What’s next on your list to learn?
I’m currently going through Andrew Ng’s online machine learning course at Stanford. I’m really interested in machine learning and plan to continue to learn about it. Also, I am developing a personal website in Django that I have connected with bootstrap.
Why the interest in startups and the technology field?
I’ve always been a competitor. I’m currently in my senior season at Rhodes College playing baseball. While I like to compete on the field, I am just as competitive off the field. I think that while working in a startup, the competition is much closer and transparent than if you are working in a corporation.
I think technology is the most exciting field to be part of right now, especially the fast developing field of big data and machine learning.
Interested in working for a startup, mid-sized company, or a corporate giant?
I would be really interested in joining a startup. I like the small culture and the diversity of problems that are faced while working in a startup.
Interested in hiring Daniel? Send an email or message him through LinkedIn.
