Daniel Wagner

About

Experience

Where I have worked

1. Oct 2025 - present

   Lab Instructor, Web Application Development (DAW)

   Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Bucharest

   • Teach the DAW labs to 90+ students across four groups; author the course materials.
   • Built and operate the course platform end to end: public labs site plus a gated dashboard for attendance, grading, quizzes and project tracking; re-implementing it in .NET 10 + Angular with clean architecture and TDD (production cutover attempted, rolled back pending semester close).
   • Per-student deployment slots on a dedicated VPS, provisioned from the admin UI.

2. 2023 - present

   Independent Engineer - Production Infrastructure

   danielwagner.ro / student-dev.ro (self-hosted)

   • Design, deploy, and operate ~10 live services across two VPSes: Docker, nginx, TLS automation (Let's Encrypt), PostgreSQL, rsync deploy pipelines.
   • Tested, manifest-driven PowerShell control plane; backups with a drilled, SHA-256-verified restore path.
   • Multi-tenant hosting for ~30 student deployments: per-student Linux accounts, nginx vhosts, SAN certificates, provisioned from a web admin UI on an isolated, sacrificial VPS.

3. 2023 - 2024

   Lab Instructor, OOP (C++) and Web Development in C# (PAW)

   Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Bucharest

   • Taught object-oriented programming in C++ and web development in C# (Razor Pages, EF Core, SQL Server, MVC, Web API) by live-coding with the students.
   • Authored full-semester public teaching materials; ran an optional SFML game-development track.

4. 2020 - present

   Private Tutor, Mathematics and Computer Science

   Independent

   • 6+ years of one-on-one teaching: ~60 students from a dozen universities, across ~30 subjects - from mathematical analysis and linear algebra to C/C++, algorithms, Linux systems programming, assembly, cryptography and databases.
   • Distilled the archive into a 17-course online catalogue (187 structured lessons) on my own learning portal.

5. 2019 - 2020, 2022 - 2023

   Volunteer Peer Tutor (Tutoriat)

   Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Bucharest

   • Ran three faculty tutoriat series for fellow students: Special Mathematics (2019-2020), C Programming and Operating Systems (2022-2023) - volunteer, faculty-organized peer tutoring.

Featured

Featured projects

Six case studies that show the range: production platforms and infrastructure, security research, and systems programming from the ground up.

Teaching & PlatformsGated

DAW Teaching Platform(Oct 2025)

The full-stack platform behind my university web development course

.NET 10AngularPostgreSQLFlaskDockernginx

Live↗Code↗Case study →

Infrastructure

Production Infrastructure(2023)

Two VPSes, ~10 live services, one tested control plane - everything on this site runs on it

LinuxDockernginxPostgreSQLPowerShellTLS

Case study →

SecurityPaper

NIST SP 800-22 Test Suite(May 2026)

All 15 NIST randomness tests in C++17, built in a team of four - my part: the spectral (DFT) test, analyzed in depth

C++CryptographyStatisticsNext.js

Live↗Code↗Case study →

SecurityPaper

Zero-Click Exploit Chain Analysis(Apr 2026)

Anatomy of the 2025 WhatsApp/ImageIO zero-click attack, with labs and a paper

Security researchMemory corruptionFlaskLaTeXIEEE format

Live↗Code↗Paper↗Case study →

Systems C/C++

JPEG Encoder(Nov 2025)

Baseline JPEG encoder in C++, from block splitting and DCT to entropy coding, written from scratch

• Every stage implemented from scratch in C++: block splitting, DCT, quantization, zigzag ordering, entropy coding (RLE + Huffman).
• No image-compression library anywhere in the pipeline.
• An analysis module measures and reports the achieved compression ratios.

C++DCTBinary formats

Code↗Case study →

Teaching & PlatformsGated

Edu Course Portal(2026)

Multi-course learning portal in .NET 10 + Angular, courses published from the UI

.NET 10AngularPostgreSQLDockerClean architecture

Live↗Case study →

Everything else

All projects

The full index, organized by domain. Live links open the deployed service; code links open the repository.

Teaching & Platforms

Platforms I built and teach on: the DAW course platform, the Edu learning portal, and an interactive electromagnetics course site.

Teaching & PlatformsGated

DAW Teaching Platform(Oct 2025)

The full-stack platform behind my university web development course

.NET 10AngularPostgreSQLFlaskDockernginx

Live↗Code↗

Case study →

Teaching & PlatformsGated

Edu Course Portal(2026)

Multi-course learning portal in .NET 10 + Angular, courses published from the UI

.NET 10AngularPostgreSQLDockerClean architecture

Live↗

Case study →

Teaching & Platforms

Bazele Electrotehnicii(2026)

Interactive electromagnetics course site: Manim animations + p5.js simulations

Next.jsManimp5.jsKaTeXElectromagneticsDocker

Live↗

Infrastructure

The two-VPS estate every live project on this site runs on: Docker, nginx, TLS automation, and a tested PowerShell control plane.

Infrastructure

Production Infrastructure(2023)

Two VPSes, ~10 live services, one tested control plane - everything on this site runs on it

LinuxDockernginxPostgreSQLPowerShellTLS

Case study →

Security

Exploit-chain analysis and randomness testing: the 2025 WhatsApp/ImageIO zero-click chain taken apart stage by stage, and all 15 NIST SP 800-22 tests built from scratch in C++17.

SecurityPaper

NIST SP 800-22 Test Suite(May 2026)

All 15 NIST randomness tests in C++17, built in a team of four - my part: the spectral (DFT) test, analyzed in depth

C++CryptographyStatisticsNext.js

Live↗Code↗

Case study →

SecurityPaper

Zero-Click Exploit Chain Analysis(Apr 2026)

Anatomy of the 2025 WhatsApp/ImageIO zero-click attack, with labs and a paper

Security researchMemory corruptionFlaskLaTeXIEEE format

Live↗Code↗Paper↗

Case study →

Systems C/C++

Systems work in C and C++, 2019 to today: a baseline JPEG encoder, a thread-pool TCP server over POSIX sockets, Chandy-Lamport distributed snapshots, a WinAPI wrapper, a C lexer, image processing, and Huffman coding.

Systems C/C++

JPEG Encoder(Nov 2025)

Baseline JPEG encoder in C++, from block splitting and DCT to entropy coding, written from scratch

C++DCTBinary formats

Code↗

Case study →

Systems C/C++

Flash-Era Game Preservation(2026)

The engineering side of my M.Sc. thesis, in progress: porting Flash-era (ActionScript/SWF) game logic to C++ compiled to WebAssembly, with an automated SWF-decompilation pipeline

C++WebAssemblyActionScriptReverse engineering

Code on request

Systems C/C++

Thread-Pool TCP Server(2024)

Multi-threaded server over POSIX sockets: thread pool, mutexes, condition variables

CPOSIX socketspthreads

Code↗

Systems C/C++

Chandy-Lamport Snapshots(2022)

Global snapshot algorithm for distributed systems, implemented over IPC

C++IPCDistributed systems

Code↗

Systems C/C++

WinAPI Wrapper(Sep 2022)

A friendlier C layer over the Windows API: windows, widgets, event callbacks

CWinAPIGUI

Code↗

Systems C/C++

C Lexer(2023)

Lexer for the C language built on finite-state automata

CFinite-state automata

Code↗

Systems C/C++

Operating Systems Labs(Oct 2019)

A terminal-to-terminal talk program over POSIX signals, fork/pipe IPC, and other Linux exercises

CPOSIXProcesses

Code↗

Systems C/C++

UFC Web Scraper(2025)

UFC event and fight data scraper in C over libcurl

ClibcurlHTML parsing

Code on request

Systems C/C++

Huffman Coding(Mar 2019)

Huffman encoder/decoder in C, with a memoized variant

CCompression

Code↗

Systems C/C++

BMP Image Processing(Mar 2021)

Image processing library for BMP: edge detection, histogram equalization, filters

CImage processing

Code↗

Systems C/C++

ImagineProcessing(May 2023)

Kernel- and filter-based image processing playground in C

CConvolution kernels

Code↗

Games

Games written from scratch, no engine beyond SDL2 and pygame: three SDL2 titles in C++ (Bubble Shooter, Tower Defense, Firefly Fantasies), a terminal Breakout in C with ncurses, Reversi with minimax and alpha-beta pruning and Septica in Python, Cat Corner in Java Swing, and a VR tower defense in Unity.

Games

Bubble Shooter(Sep 2022)

Bubble shooter with a rotating board, written from scratch in C++ with SDL2

C++SDL2Game dev

Code↗

Games

Tower Defense(Aug 2022)

Tower defense with multiple tower types and enemy pathfinding

C++SDL2Game devPathfinding

Code↗

Games

Firefly Fantasies(Nov 2023)

Hexagonal-board puzzle game: connect fireflies, special and bomb mechanics

C++SDL2Game dev

Code↗

Games

Breakout(Mar 2022)

Arkanoid-style breakout rendered entirely in the terminal with ncurses

CncursesGame dev

Code↗

Games

Reversi with Minimax AI(Jan 2020)

Othello with a minimax opponent using alpha-beta pruning, at multiple difficulty levels

PythonpygameMinimax

Code↗

Games

Septica(Dec 2019)

The traditional Romanian card game Septica, written in Python with pygame

Pythonpygame

Code↗

Games

CatCorner(Apr 2019)

Desktop puzzle game in Java Swing

JavaSwing

Code↗

Games

VR Tower Defense(Jul 2023)

Bachelor's thesis in Unity/C#: custom A* pathfinding, wave-based enemies, six tower types, extended into full VR with OpenXR

UnityC#A* pathfindingOpenXR

Code↗

Scientific Computing

Applied mathematics in code: a from-scratch neural network framework, a numerical methods library, face recognition with PCA and SVM, wavelets in image compression, and a Manim component library.

Scientific ComputingPaper

Face Recognition: PCA + SVM(May 2026)

The mathematics of face recognition: PCA whitening, eigenfaces, and kernel methods on LFW

Pythonscikit-learnOpenCVFlaskManimLaTeX

Live↗Code↗Paper↗

Case study →

Scientific Computing

Neural Network Framework(2025)

Feed-forward NN framework from scratch in C++: layers, backpropagation, SGD optimizer

C++CMakeBackpropagation

Code on request

Scientific Computing

Numerical Methods Library(Dec 2025)

C++17 root-finding and Gaussian elimination with pivoting

C++17Numerical analysis

Code↗

Scientific Computing

Wavelets in Image Compression(Nov 2025)

Interactive presentation: Fourier, filter banks, the Mallat algorithm, JPEG vs JPEG 2000

PythonFastAPIReactFFT & spectral analysis

Live↗

Scientific Computing

manimx(2026)

Reusable, themeable Manim component library for STEM animations

PythonManim

Code on request

Data Analysis

Statistical analysis on public datasets: school enrollment against GDP per capita across 174 countries, in Python and pandas.

Data Analysis

Enrollment vs GDP Analysis(May 2026)

School enrollment rates vs GDP per capita across 174 countries (UNESCO / World Bank)

PythonpandasJupyterStatistics

Code↗

Web & Scripting

Earlier web and scripting coursework: a server-rendered site in Node, Express, and EJS, and a classical cipher tool in Python with a Tkinter GUI.

Web & Scripting

Web Techniques Project(Oct 2022)

Server-rendered web project with EJS templates (2022-2023)

Node.jsExpressEJS

Code↗

Web & Scripting

Classical Ciphers(Mar 2020)

Caesar and Polybius square cipher encoder/decoder with a GUI

PythonTkinter

Code↗

Teaching

I teach what I build.

Teaching is where everything else compounds: I run university labs, build the platforms my students work on, and turn hard topics into materials people actually use.

• Web Application Development (DAW) lab instructor at the University of Bucharest: 90+ students across four lab groups.
• Built and operate the course platform itself: labs site, attendance, grading, quizzes, and per-student VPS deployment slots.
• Three volunteer tutoriat series at the faculty: Special Mathematics (2019-2020), C Programming and Operating Systems (2022-2023).
• Built an interactive electromagnetics course site around the professor's own lecture material, and a multi-course learning portal.
• Private tutor since 2020: ~60 students from a dozen universities, across ~30 subjects - analysis, linear algebra, special mathematics, statistics, numerical methods, C/C++, OOP, algorithms, Linux systems programming, assembly, Python, C#/.NET, cryptography, databases, plus BAC and university-admission prep (incl. SAT/TOLC-I).
• Distilled that archive into a 17-course online catalogue (187 structured lessons) on my learning portal, each course built from my own teaching materials.

Education

The record behind the work

1. 2025 - 2027

   In progress

   M.Sc., Coding Theory and Information Storage (TCSI)

   Faculty of Applied Sciences, National University of Science and Technology POLITEHNICA Bucharest

   • Official program name: Teoria Codării și Stocării Informației. Focus: coding theory, cryptology (cryptography and cryptanalysis), cybersecurity, information compression.
   • First-year coursework already shipped as live services: the face-recognition pipeline, the zero-click exploit-chain analysis, the NIST SP 800-22 randomness suite.
   • M.Sc. thesis in progress: security analysis and preservation of Flash-era browser games.

2. graduated 2023

   Engineer's degree (B.Eng.), Computers and Information Technology (CTI)

   Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Bucharest

   • 4-year engineering program, 240 ECTS, on the Information Technology track. Overall GPA 9.33/10.
   • Engineering core: computer architecture, microprocessor systems, analog & digital electronics, control systems, robotics, mechanics, electricity & magnetism - the layer below the code.
   • Web application development - I now teach those labs and built the platform the course depends on.
   • Cryptography and security - became the NIST SP 800-22 suite and the zero-click exploit-chain research.
   • Operating systems and distributed systems - became thread-pool POSIX servers and Chandy-Lamport snapshots.
   • Electricity & magnetism - became the interactive electromagnetics course site, built around the professor's own lecture material.
   • Programming in C, special mathematics, operating systems - subjects I went on to tutor through the faculty's tutoriat program and one-on-one for years.