Vlad Zimmerl

McMeet: A Booking Website

The project was to create as a booking website in the style of the McGill School of Computer Science websites. We built this project in a team of 3 people, as part of a web design course.

The website uses the MERN web stack. It allows users to create accounts, organize and register for meetings, as well as request meetings from other members. I contributed to all sections but mostly focused on the Node JS backend using the Express framework.

To implement the backend, I designed an API which accesses our database and sends responses to the frontend. Security was a focus. We used JWTs to authenticate users for private pages, and create randomly generated URLs for secret pages; passwords are stored in a hashed format.

Game Playing AI Competition

Designed to play the game Colosseum Survivor, our AI competed against 300 other students in an automated tournament and placed in the top 3% with a win rate of 90% against participants. We built this project in a team of 2 people as part of an artificial intelligence course using Python.

In Colosseum Survivor players may move on the board and build a wall every turn. The game ends when the players are closed off from each other. The winner is the player with the most territory.

Our AI uses AlphaBeta pruning as well as heuristic pruning and evaluates board positions with set of refined metrics.

- A database system using Java and IBM db2 to function as a reservation system similar to AirBnb. Worked in a group of 4 team members.

- A toy operating system built in C implementing a command line interface, a file system and multitasking execution.

- A testing suite built in Java. The goal was to validate a to-do list application using unit testing with JUnit, story testing with Cucumber/Gherkin, and performance testing with sonarqube/Windows-perform. Created in a group of 3 team members.

- Currently working on a game project in a group of 7 people that is a reinterpretation of the classic 1994 game X-COM: UFO Defense. Built with C# and Unity.