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Recommendations

References available upon request


Dr. Stefano Padilla (Associate Professor at Heriot-Watt University)

"Abdullah is an excellent student, he showed to be very enthusiastic and one of the top students in my two courses. His dissertation work in Interaction demonstrated ample creativity, excellent programming skills, and innovation. His work at the University is of exceptional quality, with abundant originality, and technically outstanding. He showed to be able to work quite well independently and in groups. He also grasped quickly many of the concepts, bringing originality to his work, and his curiosity and enthusiasm have led him beyond the scope of his dissertation and courses. I’m convinced without doubts that he will fulfil, if not exceed your expectations."

Mifra Khan (Product Management at Namshi.com)

"Abdullah is a gifted developer with a sharp sense of GUI and User Experience. I studied with Abdullah at Heriot-Watt University and worked with him on a number of different projects, including a final Software Engineering project that lasted a year. He mainly handled the frontend and UX design part of the Software project, and ensured Agile practices were followed. He has a strong eye for User Experience, knows what the users of a system want to see, and designs the user journey accordingly. Abdullah is a fun and efficient team member who never lets you get bored at work and makes sure all deliverables are completed on time and in the most efficient (and fun) way. I am sure he will be an asset to any team he is a part of."

Noor Abood (Community Manager at ExtraCake P.R.A)

"Abdullah joined the team to manage up to 30 volunteers in the event Main Stage and ESL Arena. During this time, he has proven himself to be a fast learner, reliable and a competent team member. Main Stage is one of the events highly challenged areas, where there is little room for mistakes, and Abdullah managed to perform his role efficiently and successfully. In such a short period, Abdullah was able to understand the tasks at hand, build rapport with staff and volunteers, as well as initiate and execute tasks accordingly. He is a pleasant and friendly individual who is a well-respected and valued member of the team."

Aneel Aranha (Senior Project Manager at Informa Middle East)

"He worked as a volunteer supervisor, in charge of coordinating / managing / working alongside 60 other volunteers for a challenging creative festival in Q1 of 2017. Not only did he perform his role exceptionally but also became an essential member of the core team. No task was too small (or as in most cases) too big to be carried out. In addition to his people management abilities, he also displayed his skills in problem solving by offering correct simple solutions to complicated problems and while remaining impressively calm through stress and fatigue. Abdullah has the rare ability to bring an energy and positiveness to the environment he is in. This is apparent in the roles he's been naturally selected for. He is a must have on your team."

Hanna Orlowski (Co-Founder at MIXTURA)

"Abdullah has helped -ING Creatives both as a volunteer for the -ING Creative Festival 2016 and as a volunteer and project coordinator during the -ING Creative Festival 2017 which happened 13-15 April 2017 at Alserkal Avenue, Dubai. Abdullah is a great team-player, easy to communicate with, follows instructions quickly and thoroughly but is also great at instructing others. He always keeps his calm and positive energy during stressful situations before and during any event and does his best to help in any way possible. During both Creative Festivals Abdullah organised and managed our volunteer teams, instructed all volunteers and explained them daily tasks, helped tend to attendees at registration and ticketing booths, organised any materials and logistics needed for talks and workshops and was readily available for any additional last-minute tasks. He is trustworthy and an amazing addition to any team and I would recommend him to every company interested with confidence."

Dr. Lilia Georgieva (PhD Supervisor and Assistant Professor at Heriot-Watt University)

"Abdullah was my student in an advance course on rigorous methods for software engineering. He excelled in the course and demonstrated exceptional attention to detail when designing and analysing complex model specifications. Abdullah has intuitive talent of problem solving, which he demonstrated when using his technical skills in various modelling scenarios, e.g. modelling of Automatic Vessel Protection (AVP) system, enterprise models, constraint satisfaction problems. I recommend him most highly!"



Co-Dev Experience

Working with multiple information technology companies

IBM Corporation

Amazon Inc.

SAP SE

Visa Inc.



Programming Languages

Experienced with

C Sharp

C++

.NET

Python

R

HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript

mySQL

Java



Tools Used

Using well-known tools

Azure DevOps

Docker

SAP S/4HANA

Neo4j

R Studio

Tableau

Visual Studio IDE

JIRA





About Me







I am very passionate about the field of Software Engineering and Cyber-Security. In 2014, I received the Go Global Student Award scholarship and decided to pursue my passion, so I enrolled at Heriot-Watt University. I graduated with a Bachelor's of Science Degree in Computer Systems, with 2:1 (Upper Division) Honours from Heriot-Watt University (HWU) at Edinburgh, UK in 2018. My quest for knowledge and experience did not end there. Shortly, I joined St. Cloud State University (SCSU) in the Fall of 2019 to pursue a Master’s of Science Degree in Information Assurance, which is the main focus of Cyber-Security. I selected this program because it is the only program that is approved by the Department of Homeland Security. In Fall of 2022 I graduated from SCSU and received my MS Degree.

This focus on getting academic accreditation did not stop me from having extracurricular activities and I participated in many events either as a competitor or as an event organizer.

Specialties:
• Developing, pitching and evangelizing vision for security
• Creative team management
• Strong emphasis on design iteration through research-driven testing
• Experience with C Sharp, C++, C, LUA, R, SQL, mySQL, .NET, Python, Java, HTML, CSS, JS, PHP, jQuery, and AJAX


7+ years of Research & Development and 4+ years of Security Architecture and Design experience.
Currently seeking full-time opportunities in Software Engineering, Cyber-Security, Product Security, or Technology Development.

Education and Achievements


MS Grad Photo

BSc Grad Photo

BSc Grad Photo

Debate

-ING Creative Festival Volunteer Orientation Day

FGB Hackathon Check

VISA Hackathon Check

DWGS - Indie Game DevFest Finalist

Master's of Science Degree in Information Assurance from St. Cloud State University (Minnesota, US)

A summary of my most notable achievements over my academic career (2014-2022):

MS Term Paper: The Effects of Cheats in Anti-Cheat Protected Servers. Wrote a starred paper identifying the key scenarios into what a user recognizes and experiences in terms of being exposed to cheats, to possibly aid in the creations of a more secure Anti-Cheat software for developing existing/future studios.

BSc Dissertation Project: Focused on the field of Interaction in Video Games (Tech Demo: Beyond Souls): Created a game from scratch using the Unity3D game engine to conduct a systematic analysis on a game’s user interface, included with its overall performance, as well as player’s behaviour in a stressful and eerie virtual environment, using volunteers who are familiar with common video-game controls. The project involves studying, as well as play-testing, different multiplayer games in order to gain a first-hand perspective to hypothesize a core relationship between player and an interaction. Production of a multiplayer game, where users can interact with one another, as well as, the objects that surround them was vital; especially in acquiring the analysis to the aforementioned relationship.

Computer Network Security (Project 1) - Symmetric Encrypting Algorithm: Completed tasks in learning core concepts of secret key encryption, by obtaining evidence-based experience when encrypting, as well as, decrypting messages.

Computer Network Security (Project 2) - Secure Applet: Created a java applet, which will then later by signed with a X.509 certificate, to verify a file signed by another external group.

First Gulf Bank Hackathon | Abu Dhabi | 2nd Runner Up - Lead my team, Unity Insomniacs, by creating an Augmented Reality application using the Unity Engine (Beta). The AR app catered to the banking sector where the user could enter a 4-digit pin and access an interface that displayed multiple 3-Dimensional panels that were fully functional. As well as using Google Map's API to navigate the user to an existing FGB ATM machine as well, as notifying the user whenever he/she is in proximity of a nearby offer. To top it all off, we implemented a smart learning algorithm that produced supervised inductive learning method to adapt and recognize a credit/debit card.

The Digital Payments Hackathon | Dubai | 2nd Place - Team Unity Insomniacs won back-to-back once more during the Digital Payments Hackathon organized by AngelHack and sponsored by VISA, Decode Dubai, MobileConnect, in5 and Dubai Internet City. Our goal was to determine where digital payment solutions will have the most impact on the future of Dubai. We needed to leverage at least one “VISA Payment Method API” to create a digital payment application. We competed against 19 teams. After developing for 24-hours, we created a fully functional augmented reality application called “VISA AR” and emerged victorious, placing second.

Web Programming (Project 1) - Created a music store website "Spectre Music" where customers can add items to cart and checkout. Using HTML5 (XHTML syntax), CCS3, responsive web design, PHP, XML, mySQL and JavaServer Pages (JSP).

Web Programming (Project 2) - Created a Twitter Follower Manager website, using the Twitter API implementing AJAX and MySQL databases.

Hardware-Software Interface (Project 1) - Created a steganography software using C to be used with “.PPM” format files using a 2D array.

Hardware-Software Interface (Project 2) - Recreated the game "Mastermind", using C and assembly language.

Interaction Design - Designed a full-scaled penguin robot caretaker "Pengubot". As a team we carried on an experimental protocol and demonstrated a video/visual strip of a scenario.

Web Design and Databases - Created a fully functional game store website "Planet Undead" to showcase our skills of web design including PHP and MySQL databases. Awarded the best website theme and design.

3D Graphics and Animation | Until Dawn Cabin - Designed and implemented a rendering and animation system, in OpenGL, that demonstrated the various concepts of a graphics engine learned throughout this course. The scene consisted of a Scenegraph that was 3+ levels in depth, three geometry models, various transformations and rotations, various material and lighting shader iterations and an automated camera system with multiple user interactions upon the objects in the scene.

DST Crash Bandicoot Mod - Made a Crash Bandicoot mod for Don't Starve Together (a game by Klei Entertainment) on Valve's Steam Workshop. It involved: Creating sketches, Managing a team, Lua Coding/HTML, and other similar skills. The mod currently sits as one of the top favorited character mods with over 200,000 downloads.

Best Growth - IGDA eJam 2020 Won the Best Growth award in the IGDA's eJam 2020. A completely virtual game jam that pairs students with professional game developers to jam out awesome game projects in just 48 hours! The jam was generously sponsored by Obsidian Entertainment, Core Games, Riot Forge Games, and Unity.






Downloadable Resume


Social Media

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