Christopher Gifford

Background

About Christopher Gifford

I am primarily a.NET web app developer with additional experience in Javascript, Python and Java. My current primary database technology is SQL Server, but I have also worked extensively with PostgreSQL/PostGIS and MongoDB. My most recent position was with the State of Maine's Office of Information Technology where I worked closely with the Department of Corrections to support roughly 15 applications and over 400 SSRS reports. In my time there I worked with several Maine county jails to develop a significant enhancement and technology upgrade to an existing high-profile application. I worked independently to incorporate new requirements, provide considerable upgrades to existing features and upgraded the app from.NET Framework Web Forms to.NET Core Blazor. Additionally in this project, I created a custom migration solution to allow the existing and new versions to operate in tandem which significantly shortened the project timeline and allowed us to deliver the anticipated features faster. I also brought the outdated application into compliance with new security and accessibility standards. Overall, this project significantly surpassed client expectations. For 1.5 years in college I worked with a software company, Maprisk, as a software development intern. I mainly worked with Javascript, MongoDB and PostgreSQL/PostGIS. I had the opportunity to work on an implementation of geocoding which processes written addresses and translates them to a latitude/longitude location. I also initiated a project to work closely with an open-source, machine learning-based project called Libpostal revising functionality, updating critical components and improving performance on data preprocessing and training. Additionally, during my senior year of high school and my freshman year of college, I worked on a series of artificial intelligence-based independent studies. They mainly helped me explore common techniques and applications within two specific areas of study within Artificial Intelligence: Part-of-speech tagging and Speech synthesis. I've been most interested in developing my own A.I. personal assistant for educational purposes and further understanding the mechanisms required to teach computers complicated, intuitive-based skills and abilities such as generating speech and understanding human communication.