Hello, my name is
Cooper Sanders
Computer Engineer
- cssande@clemson.edu
- +1 (336) 707-6558
- cooper6558
- cooper6558
Who I am
I’m an engineer, mathematician, and musician at Clemson University. In December 2023, I will graduate with a B.S. in Computer Engineering with a Minor in Mathematical Sciences, and a B.S. in Electrical Engineering. I’m currently looking for an entry level technical position to begin after graduation. Feel free to contact me if you’re interested in working together!
Outside of Engineering...
I’m an active chess player, competing in local rated tournaments whenever I can. I’m also a jazz trombonist. I perform with local bands in upstate South Carolina as well as Clemson’s jazz band, and I’m the featured trombone soloist of the Clemson University Tiger Band. I also founded and currently manage a rock band, which you can see performing in local bars around Clemson.
What I do
I have a broad range of professional interests, including parallel computing architecture, software engineering, analog electronics engineering, and even audio engineering, but most of my experience is in parallel programming. In 2022, I worked for Los Alamos National Lab with the team behind Foresight, an open source compression benchmark suite, and I’ve been a go-to CUDA expert for several published research projects at Clemson. I’m known for ambitious professional and personal projects, such as when I implemented a (very rudimentary) computer solely from discrete logic gates just to demonstrate how digital computers are organized. In all of my endeavors – academic, professional, and extracurricular – I deliver results with unmatched professionalism, ensuring top tier development practice in addition to functionality.
Publications
Hickman Fulp M, Fulp D, Zou C, et al. Accelerated dynamic data reduction using spatial and temporal properties. The International Journal of High Performance Computing Applications. 2023;0(0). doi:10.1177/10943420231180504
Posters & Presentations
Spring 2023 ECE Senior Design Poster Session @ Clemson University, April 26, 2023
18th Annual Focus on Creative Inquiry Poster Forum @ Clemson University, April 6, 2023
IndySCC @ SC22, November 15, 2022
9th Annual Summer Undergraduate Research Symposium @ Clemson University, July 29, 2022
Student Cluster Competition @ The International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage, and Analysis (SC21), November 16, 2021
Clemson University, August 2021
16th Annual Focus on Creative Inquiry Poster Forum, April 1, 2021
Watson-in-the-Watt AI Virtual Symposium @ Clemson University, April 21, 2020
MakerDay 7 @ Clemson University, December 5, 2019
Selected Projects & Experiences
Breadboard Computer
I implemented an 8-bit, fully programmable computing circuit using breadboards and 7400 series ICs as a personal side project. The circuit took about a month to build/debug and spans 15 full sized breadboards. This effort demonstrated many gate level digital design concepts, such as memory, arithmetic, and instruction decoding.
AVL Tree Interfacing
The instructor designed final project for Algorithms & Data Structures at Clemson University was to implement, test, and compare several searching algorithms including AVL and binary search trees. I finished at the top of the class, landing a productive internship with the instructor's research lab.
Overfit
A personal side project, I wrote this software with Numpy to perfectly fit a polynomial hypersurface to any dataset. Mathematically, it's a generalization of polynomial interpolation. Though it's not a very practical interpolation scheme, it's an interesting proof of concept demonstration.
Pearson Correlation Networks on GPUs
This was my student designed course project for ECE 678 (GPU Programming) at Clemson University. Given a set of vectors, this algorithm computes the Pearson correlation coefficient between every pair of vectors. The core mathematical operation that I achieved to complete the project was the parallel matrix multiplication of a matrix with its own transpose. By avoiding a standard mat-mult algorithm and taking advantage of the special case, I wrote this kernel to run efficiently without copying or transposing the matrix.
ACM Student Cluster Competition
I was on Clemson's Student Cluster Competition team for several years, where I built a miniature compute cluster out of Raspberry Pi's, administered HPC software, and competed at competitions in SC21 and SC22.
Bit-Pair Recoded Multiplier
My Digital Design class culminated in a fixed-point multiplication circuit. This was one of my most challenging and educational course projects. A modular and generic project capable of variable word lengths, this multiplier implemented bit-pair recoding to reduce adder operations.
Directional Audio for Sufferers of Hearing Loss
My student designed capstone project, I led a team of six talented seniors through a challenging and successful semester. We built a device that tracks faces using computer vision and aims a directional amplitude modulated audio signal at the target, resulting in boosted sound levels for one specific person in the room. We were nominated for best project by several faculty.
Honors & Awards
Best Poster, IndySCC22
I competed with Clemson University's IndySCC team in 2022, an undergraduate supercomputing competition part of the SC22 conference in Dallas. Clemson won "best poster" for the presentation of our team's strategy.
Honors College
I've been a member of the Clemson University Honors College since enrolling as a freshman.
President's List
Awarded President's List at Clemson University on multiple occasions for a 4.0 semester.
Jungaleers Memorial Grant
Received multiple semesters. Scholarship awarded to an outstanding jazz band student at Clemson University.