SaBra Alexandria Neal, PhD
SaBra.Neal@ngc.com
sabra.a.neal@gmail.com
Analytical, inquisitive systems engineer with a solid foundation in research, math, programming, and modeling and simulation. Seeking leadership and growth opportunities to expand skillset. Technical abilities include; but, are not limited to modeling and simulation, data distribution, object oriented design, agile, git, PyQt, CMake, C, C++, Java, and Python.
EDUCATION
Doctor of Philosophy in Computational Science and Engineering May 2018
The Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA
Dissertation Title: “Energy Efficient Data Driven Distributed Traffic Simulations”
Advisor: Dr. Richard Fujimoto
Bachelor of Science in Computer Science May 2013
North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, Greensboro, NC
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE Principal Systems Engineer
Northrop Grumman – Mission Systems, Linthicum, MD 8/2018 – Present
FTL (Future Technical Leader) Class of 2022 8/2019 – Present
SYDECAR (Synthetic Digital Environments, Clutter and Returns) Project 8/2018 – 8/2019
- Team Lead
- Responsible for assigning task to team members, communicating project status with Project management, and onboarding new team members
- Developed a project QBD (Quality by Design) tool in Python and PyQt
- Responsible for implementing filtering features that worked with, Gantt charts, and bar graph pages reflecting project current status to Project management
- Developed emitter pulse descriptor model in C++ that is driven from user inputted data
- Responsible for documenting model in html and updating project website
- Developed rabbit ear firmware model in C++
- Responsible for integrating rabbit error model into the whole firmware simulation
RESEARCH EXPERIENCE Graduate Research Assistant (GRA) 8/2013 – 5/2018
College of Computing: School of Computational Science and Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology Atlanta, GA
- Executed research that measured the power consumption of traffic simulators that predicted overall throughput time that are ran on mobile devices
- Executed research that measured the power consumption of HLA Data Distribution Management Grid-Based Method during communication
- Presented findings at Georgia Tech Big Data Industry Forum
Intern 5/2016 – 8/2016
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Research and Development Center ITL, Vicksburg, MS
- Developed a discrete event simulation model for Joint Logistics Over the Shore operations in an austere environment
- Developed a discrete event simulation model for Offshore Petroleum Discharge System
5/2015 – 7/2015
- Developed a technique to combine output from an Army Logistics simulation system in order to understand the time it would take to get through the system as a whole under different conditions and scenarios
5/2012 – 7/2012
May 2011 – July 2011
- Manipulated existing terrain data to create realistic, computer-generated scenes to improve the ability to sense remote targets of interest
Intern 5/2013 – 8/2013
CRUISE Program, The Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta
- Conducted research in the area of crowdsourcing
- Compiled literature that helped to identify how crowd sourced data could be used to drive a Dynamic Data Driven Application System that focuses on transportation system
- Presented findings at CRUISE Symposium
Undergraduate Research Assistant (URA) 8/2011 – 5/2013
Department of Computer Science, North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University
- Conducted research in the area of bioinformatics in the Center for Advanced Studies in Identity Sciences
- Developed genetic and evolutionary feature extraction techniques for facial recognition and biometric-based access control protocols
- Developing novel feature extraction/selection techniques in an effort to recognize users of computing devices based on the way they use mouse.
- Co-authored three conference publications
TEACHING EXPERIENCE Teaching Assistant
Computational Problem Solving CSE 6010/CX 4010 8/2016 – 12/2016
School of Computational Science and Engineering, The Georgia Institute of Technology
- Assisted students with class material and projects
- Instructed lab lectures
- Graded student assignments, and exams
Modeling and Simulation: Fundamentals & Implementation CSE 6730 6/2015 – 5/2015
School of Computational Science and Engineering, The Georgia Institute of Technology
- Assisted students with class material and projects
- Instructed lab lectures
- Graded student quizzes, projects, and exams
Introduction to Computer Programming GEEN 163 8/2012 – 5/2013
Department of Computer Science, North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University
- Assisted students with lab and homework assignments
- Graded student lab and homework assignments
- Assisted professor with grading student exams
Computer Programming Design GEEN 165 8/2011 – 5/2013
Department of Computer Science, North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University
- Assisted students with lab and homework assignments
- Graded student lab and homework assignments
- Assisted professor with grading student exams
Data Structures COMP 280 8/2011 – 5/2013
Department of Computer Science, North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University
- Assisted students with homework programming assignments
- Graded programming assignments and programing presentations
- Instructed weekly help sessions for extra assistance on understanding class material
PUBLICATIONS AND PRESENTATIONS
Neal, S., Fujimoto, R.M. “Power Consumption of Future Event List Implementations in Discrete Event Simulations”, Spring Simulation Conference, April 2018
Neal, S., Fujimoto, R.M. “Energy Consumption of HLA Data Distribution Management Approaches”, Winter Simulation Conference, December 2017
R.M. Fujimoto, M. Hunter, A. Biswas, M. Jackson, S. Neal, “Power Efficient Distributed Simulation,” Principles of Advanced Discrete Simulation, May 2017
Neal, S., Fujimoto, R.M., Hunter, M. “Energy Consumption of Data Driven Traffic Simulations”, Winter Simulation Conference, December 2016
Fujimoto, R.M., Guin, A., Hunter, M., Park,H., Kannan, R., Kanitkar, G., Milholen, M., Neal,S., Pecher, P., “A Dynamic Data Driven Application System for Vehicle Tracking,” 2014 International Conference on Computational Science, Dynamic Data Driven Application Systems Workshop, June 2014
Neal, S., Kanitkar, G., Fujimoto, R.M., “Power Consumption of Data Distribution Management for On-line Systems”, Principles of Advanced and Discrete Simulation, May 2014
Shelton, J., Adams, J., Alford, A., Venable, M., Neal, S., Dozier, G., & Bryant, K. (2012, July). Mitigating replay attacks using Darwinian-based Feature Extraction. In Computational Intelligence for Security and Defense Applications (CISDA), 2012 IEEE Symposium on (pp. 1-7). IEEE.
Adams, J., Shelton, J., Small, L., Neal, S., Venable, M., Kim, J. H., and Dozier, G. “Darwinian-based Feature Extraction Using K-Means and Kohonen Clustering,” The 23nd Midwest Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science Conference (MAICS), Cincinnati, OH, April 21-22, 2012
Shelton, J., Venable, M., Neal, S., Adams, J., Alford, A., and Dozier, G. (2012). “Pixel Consistency, K-Tournament Selection, and Darwinian-Based Feature Extraction.” The 23nd Midwest Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science Conference (MAICS), Cincinnati, OH, April 21-22, 2012
Oral Presentations
Presentation on Darwinian Feature Extraction, (December 2012), National Science Foundation Presentation, BEACON Center for the Study of Evolution in Action, Michigan State University, Lansing, MI
HONORS AND AWARDS
Graduate
- 1st African-American PhD graduate of the School of Computational Science & Engineering, The Georgia Institute of Technology,
- ACM SIGSIM WSC 2017 Student Travel Award December 2017
- Google Research Summit Invitee September 2017
- Facebook Women in Research Conference Invitee February 2017
- ACM SIGSIM WSC 2016 Student Travel Award December 2016
- Grace Hopper Travel Grant October 2015
College of Computing, The Georgia Institute of Technology
- CRA-W Grad Cohort Workshop April 2015
- Presidential Fellowship Fall 2013 – Spring 2017
College of Computing, School of Computational Science & Engineering,
The Georgia Institute of Technology
Undergraduate
North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University
- Deans List Fall 2009 – Spring 2013
- National Science Foundation Scholar (NSF) August 2009 – May 2013
- Dowdy Scholarship August 2009 – May 2013
CONFERENCES AND WORKSHOPS ATTENDED
- Spring Simulation Multi-Conference, Baltimore, Maryland April 2018
- Winter Simulation Conference, Las Vegas, Nevada December 2017
- Winter Simulation Conference, Washington, DC December 2016
- Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, Houston, TX October 2015
- Computing Research Association – Women Workshop, April 2015
San Francisco, CA - Principles of Advanced and Discrete Simulation, Denver, CO May 2014
ORGANIZATIONS
- African American Task Group August 2018 – Present
- High School Involvement Partnership Mentor (HIP) August 2018 – Present
- Northrop Grumman Women International Network (NGWIN) BWI August 2018– Present
- Northrop Grumman Women International Network (NGWIN) STEM August 2018 – Present
- Gen to Gen August 2018 – Present
- Black Graduate Students Association 2013 – 2018
- Society of Women Engineers 2013 – Present
- National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE) 2009 – Present
- NC A&T Honors Program 2009 –2013
- The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) 2009 – 2013
HONOR SOCIETIES
- Phi Kappa Phi Spring 2012 – Present
- Upsilon Pi Epsilon (Computer Science Honor Society) Spring 2012 – Present
- Alpha Kappa Mu Honor Society Fall 2011 – Present
- Golden Key International Honour Society Spring 2011 – Spring 2013
- Alpha Lambda Delta (Freshmen Honor Society) Spring 2010
