Kiersten Stokes

About Me

Personal

Hi, my name is Kiersten and I'm addicted to self-improvement. I love to learn and experiment both on the clock and off, so I've naturally been drawn to the STEM fields for as long as I can remember. In my free time, I enjoy working out, reading, and making lists for just about everything. Jeez, that makes me sound boring, but I promise that is not the case!

I've moved around almost my entire life, and I love exploring the unique cultures of each place. Check out the map in the "Contact" section below for a cool visual!

I also love tiny things and animals, so I hope you enjoy the simple mini-game I've created here. You'll be able to play if you're using a desktop computer with a large enough browser window (game is hidden at small browser window sizes and does not currently support touch functionality, sorry). Find six animals and drag them to the "Animal Pen" in the lower left corner of the page.

Professional

I am currently a computer science master's student at USC, though I took a somewhat non-traditional path to get to this point. After attaining my undergraduate degree in chemistry, I went on to work as an Education Coordinator at SmithBucklin for several years, which allowed me to further develop my natural communication, critical thinking, and project management skills. I had a passion for all technical aspects of the job, and that combined with my natural inclination toward problem solving inspired me to pursue a lateral career change into computer science.

Though the jump directly into a master’s degree has been challenging, it has likewise been extremely rewarding. Both my formal courses and my self-study pursuits have highlighted to me that I made the correct decision getting into CS. At the same time, I’m grateful for the experiences that led me to this point, as they have allowed me to gain a unique and valuable set of skills that I know can provide a fresh perspective to the field.

StrengthsFinder Top 5

Achiever

I have a great deal of stamina and work hard. I take great satisfaction from being productive.

Strategic

I create alternative ways to proceed. I can quickly spot relevant patterns and issues.

Consistency

I treat everyone in the world with consistency by setting clear rules and adhering to them.

Learner

I have a great desire to learn and want to continuously improve in all areas.

Discipline

I enjoy routine and structure. My world is best described by the order I create.

Education

Degrees

M.S. Computer Science

Expected Completion: August 2020

GPA: 3.87

Courses Completed: Introduction to Programming Systems Design, Operating Systems, Introduction to Computer Networks, Analysis of Algorithms, Research Colloquium, Information Retrieval and Web Search Engines, Database Systems

Courses Projected: Web Technologies, Machine Learning, Foundations of Artificial Intelligence

B.S. Chemistry

Attained: May 2013

GPA: 3.89

Minor: Management & Organizations

Scholarships: Chemistry Departmental Scholarship (2011, 2012), Miami University Merit Scholarship (2009, 2010, 2011, 2012), National Merit Scholar Finalist Scholarship (2009, 2010, 2011, 2012)

Online Courses

Machine Learning

Coursera (Stanford University)

Databases and SQL Querying

Udemy

Introduction to Operating Systems

Udacity (Georgia Institute of Technology)

CS50

edX (Harvard University)

Experience

Career

SmithBucklin

Feb 2014 - July 2017

Chicago, IL

Education Coordinator

Throughout my time at SmithBucklin, I was able to translate my passion for learning into meaningful educational experiences for clients in the business, healthcare, and technology industries and the non-profit sector. I served in many roles in the Education and Learning Services department, being promoted twice in a span of two years and soon after being specially selected for a unique e-Learning and instructional design consulting and project-based role.

My first two and a half years at SmithBucklin, I worked with board members and key volunteers from a wide variety of client associations. My mission was to advance their organization by creating customized education solutions for association members including webinars, mobile applications, technical papers, conference education and keynote programming, live-capture recordings, and e-Learning modules.

I have a knack for quickly picking up new concepts and technology, which led to me becoming the go-to e-Learning and learning management system expert within the department. In my role as coordinator, I worked to bring client’s online courses to life with strategic focus and an e-Learning and instructional design expertise.

My work both with these varied technologies and for one of my clients, ACM SIGGRAPH, spurred me to make a career change into the Computer Science field in order to pursue my newfound passion.

Projects

Weenix Operating System

Language: C

Given a large codebase containing the skeleton of a stripped-down modern OS (Weenix), implemented several kernel-level functions to provide various OS functionalities such as processes, threads, virtual file system, and portions of virtual memory.

Voronoi Diagram Visualization

Language: R

Using coordinate information from a list of cities within the continental US and several R packages, created a set of Thiessen polygons (in other words, a proximity interpolation) and superimposed the tesselated surface over a map.

Search Engine Implementation

Languages: Java, PHP, HTML

Employed Apache Solr and Lucene to index a set of web pages, then created a front-end interface to search these indexed pages, including support for spelling correction, autocomplete, and snippet generation.

Image Classification (Machine Learning)

Language: Python

Leveraged Google Colab, TensorFlow, and Jupyter notebooks to train a simple neural network to differentiate between pictures of cats and dogs and to correctly classify new pictures of cats and dogs.

Skills & Such

Languages

C/C++

Java

HTML

Javascript

python

SQL

PHP

Frameworks & Tools

Unix/Linux

VMWare

VirtualBox

Git

GDB

Lucene/Solr

Eclipse

RStudio

PostgreSQL

Contact

Click to view interactive diagram in new window.

A Voronoi diagram is a "partitioning of a plane with points into convex polygons such that each polygon contains exactly one generating point and every point in a given polygon is closer to its generating point than to any other." Each point represents a place I've lived (in the continental United States). Reach out if we have any locations in common!

Animal Pen

Dedicated to lifelong learning for myself and for others, to streamlining anything & everything, to growing genuine relationships based in trust, and to infusing humor as often as possible.