An integral part of my college experience so far has been participating in the Garman Guides program at Bucknell. First year engineering students across all majors must take an audit class one evening a week that is student-taught. This class focuses on topics decided by faculty oversight, ranging from test prep to comfort and life on campus. My experience during my freshman year really helped me to adjust to life in Lewisburg and meet people in the college as well as my department.

Near the end of my freshman year, I was offered the opportunity to become one of these student teachers: a Garman Guide. I wanted to make the same impact that I felt on my peers; give them in turn a place to express fears, ask questions, and familiarize themselves with the ECE department. Over the past two years I’ve had two great groups of first-year students: some of them continue to be my friends, coworkers, and friendly faces around campus. I feel that I’ve really been given the opportunity to make a difference in our community in a positive way, and I continue to be thankful for the opportunity. Pictured is our group of Guides at our annual training. Learn more about the Garman Guides program in this article about one of my Baja peers.

During fall of 2025 I had the exciting opportunity to work with one of our professors, Amal Kabalan, on her research in biosensor production. Her team of researchers is identifying biomarkers in samples and had created a test apparatus they wanted to produce as an integrated circuit for further research use utilizing electrodes to stimulate samples placed into the IC. They reached out to me to contract some CAD work as they were unfamiliar with the program necessary, KLayout. KLayout is used for the creation of .gds, aka GDSII file formats, which are used to mask layers of silicon or similar substrate materials for IC production later on. This venture into VLSI and IC design is super exciting for me, as it’s something not really ever covered by my university or offered as a concentration or course of study. This opportunity to join Professor Kabalan in designing an IC for production was therefore very exciting and one I eagerly jumped at. While this component is extremely simple and was designed fairly quickly, it’s an important step towards more complex design, even dipping into the VLSI range, despite this being simply integrated design, not very-large-scale integrated design. Designing for her allowed me to not only familiarize myself with KLayout, but gain experience in precise design for applications with tight tolerances, learn about VLSI-specific design, and assist in creation of a product that will hopefully assist their research team for several years to come. I hope to continue in my learning and venture further into VLSI and IC design!

SAE Baja is a national competition by the Society of Automotive Engineers. It’s the sister competition of Formula Student: Baja is based off of the rally that occurs in Baja, California. Teams of students from universities across the US compete to design and manufacture the most capable off-road race vehicle they can within certain guidelines.

While this competition mainly attracts mechanical engineers, there are some electronics on the car that warrant a subsection of the team focused on ECE subjects. During the 2024-25 academic year, I led a group of ~10 Electrical or Computer Engineers in order to create a robust system on the Bucknell Baja car: these include a datalogger, controls for electronic differentials, and a wiring harness responsible for engine management and killswitches. Part of my role on this team was delegating tasks to those on our subteam, while contributing significantly to our products myself.

The perfboard that can be seen in the images is a hand-soldered datalogger that acts as a backpack on an Arduino Mega 32u4. It records position, accelerometer and gyroscopic data, and timing information onto an SD card in a .csv format for later use. The PCB is a differential control board that utilizes an ATMEGA32u4 and a half-bridge IC in order to take in data from differential outputs as well as driver control switches, and select the proper drive mode. The electronic differentials use a proprietary Yamaha connector that controls the internal servo, which interacts with a rack-and-pinion to select the drive mode. We control this with the half-bridge in order to change drive mode and use its built-in continuity outputs to feed information into the board. I was the lead on both of these products, ending up designing the board on my own and soldering the datalogger.

This year in Bucknell Baja we plan to employ an ECE senior design team to take over one of these products, while our subteam continues the others. Our plans include turning the perfboard datalogger into a PCB, and creating another revision of the differential board and producing it.