Hello everyone! My name is Dominique Dalanni and I am a single mother, full time student and am fully employed. My educational journey has been a long road with the ups and downs I have experience throughout my adult life, but I am so proud to say that I have finally made it though my undergraduate journey at a university I absolutely love.
I have two children who are about twelve years apart in age that I absolutely adore. These two little humans are the reason that I have been able to apply myself and overcome obstacles I have faced throughout my adult years. For me, graduating with my degree in Computer Science helps to teach my children that absolutely anything is possible with hard work, motivation, dedication, and through making choices that positively impact the community and world around us.
About My Computer Science Journey
When I began studying computer science, I was 28 years old and had never written a line of code or even taken an advanced Calculus or Physics course for that matter. I only had the faith that if I gave it a shot and failed at least I would have tried. I did not fail. In fact, I excelled in my studies and they have saved me throughout some of the most difficult times in my life. In addition, I have built a skillset that allows me to constantly learn and grow without ever allowing me to become bored. Through the skillset I have learned how to help others in many ways, and hope to apply my skillset to help solve problems through data and technology in the future.
About My Project
For my senior design project, I wanted to be able to take real world data that I understand, apply an algorithm to it, and integrate real-world services to be able to visualize that data. As a non traditional student, learning abstract algorithms and concepts in textbooks has not come easy. Through this project I was able to learn how to create an idea, and grow it into a real world product.
I currently work for a local aviation company where we sell and maintain a single engine turbo prop aircraft called the TBM which is manufactured in France.
Through my time with the company I have learned that the US is a very large market for both the TBM and competitor aircraft. For this project, I wanted to see just how large, so I included other neighboring countries that have a TBM market as well.
Because I am a computer science major, I wanted to be able to apply an algorithm to my data in order to learn how you can apply an algorithm in a real-world scenario. I chose use the Haversine Algorithm that provides the distance between two points on a sphere in order to find the closest populated city to each aircraft’s listed home location. Knowing the radius of the earth, I was able to apply this algorithm using the latitude and longitude from each aircraft’s location, with the latitude and longitude from each city in my dataset, to find the shortest distance between a populated city and an aircraft’s home location. It was fun!
Lastly, I wanted to use real-world systems to create my web application in a way where I could gain valuable experience with system creation and integration of products businesses currently use today. I chose to use AWS resources for my web application and database, and embedded Power Bi reports I created with my data using Power Bi as a Service. Over the summer, I had taken a course at CSUCI where we used AWS in order to be able to hit the ground running for my project in the fall and it was truly helpful. I am so thankful to have had the opportunity to create this project and am so thankful to my current employer for giving me the inspiration to build and create something like this.
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