I am an Embedded Software Engineer by profession, a Mechanical Engineer by education, and a curious tinkerer by hobby. I have a wide range of interests and decided to use this site as a central hub to document everything I work on. I’m not entirely sure what this will evolve into, but for now, it’s a fun project to track my endeavors as the new year kicks off.
Education
From 2016 to 2021, I attended Virginia Tech, where I earned a BS in Mechanical Engineering. During that time, I developed an interest in computer science and managed to take a few introductory courses on the subject. My initial goal was to pursue a career in robotics, which led me to participate in undergraduate research with the FASER Lab. Under the supervision of Dr. Komendera and the graduate students in the lab, I was exposed to a wealth of knowledge far beyond what I had learned in class. This experience not only broadened my understanding but also made me realize how much there was still left to learn."
A major component of the Mechanical Engineering curriculum was the capstone project during my final year. For my project, we explored the impact and functionality a fifth appendage could add to a quadruped robot, focusing specifically on stability (we added a tail to a robotic dog). I was elected team leader and served as the sole software developer for the project. While it was a challenging endeavor, I’m extremely proud that, within the span of one academic year, we were able to design, build, and test a quadruped with an additional linkage. This platform is now available for future teams to use in their experiments.
Professional Experince
- Student Paid Researcher (2019 - 2021)
I am part of the unfortunate generation that had to experience college during the COVID-19 pandemic. Through my connections with the FASER Lab and my Mechatronics professor, I was introduced to Dr. Joseph Meadows, under whom I worked on developing a ventilator substitute using a BiPAP machine. My role focused on reading data from pressure sensors using an MSP432 microcontroller and outputting the analyzed data to a Python script for display. You can read more about the project here.
- Firmware Engineer (2021 - present)
After graduation, I joined Instant Care Inc., which had recently been acquired by Connect America. Being part of a small team meant I was given a great deal of autonomy and trust early on. The devices I develop are typically straightforward, battery-powered remote sub-GHz devices. This allowed me to quickly gain experience writing bare-metal code for microcontrollers to interface with various sensors and radio modules. More recently, as we’ve transitioned to working with more complex radio protocols such as Bluetooth, Zigbee, and Z-Wave, I’ve expanded my skill set to include RTOS development and even some backend systems to offload and process data.