Professional
Resume
My resume is available for viewing as a PDF file. (Please note, I have removed some information from the resume posted here for privacy concerns. If you would like a complete copy, please contact me.)
Activities
Engineering
Tinkering with computers and electronics has always been a hobby of mine, and it is turning into a career as well. Currently I am a graduate student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Before moving to Illinois, I attended Rice University, receiving a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering (BSEE) degree in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in May 2008. My specialization area was somewhere between Computer Engineering, Systems, and Signals as my coursework has focused on all of these areas.
As for professional experience, I have worked three summer internships on electrical and computer engineering projects at Schlumberger Technology Corporation in Sugar Land, Texas at the Sugar Land Technology Center (SPC). During the summer of 2008, I worked on a fourth internship with Schlumberger, this time a bit farther away from Sugar Land in Clamart, France at the Schlumberger Riboud Product Center (SRPC), which is just southwest of Paris.
Information Technology
That tinkering with computers and electronics also got me to tinkering with software at some point, which has also served as a side career while in school. During high school, I worked for Blue Bell Creameries, which helped me gain enough experience to start IT consulting on the side. I have continued to perform IT consulting during college, with assorted clients from small businesses to large corporations, all primarily located in the Houston area. Presently I am trying to develop my photography business, so I do not plan to take on any new clients, although if you are interested in my business, please do contact me.
Photography
A hobby that can help pay for itself, photography is a passion of mine. While most of my photography is personal, I'm presently a Staff Photographer for the Daily Illini, the independent student newspaper of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Please feel free to look at some of my work for the Daily Illini. During my time at Rice, I served for a couple years as the Photography Editor for the Rice Thresher. Please feel free to look at some of my work for the Rice Thresher. When possible, I enjoy to photograph private events for clients, such as parties of all sorts. If you wish to learn more about my photography, please see my photography portfolio or contact me.
Projects
Fortunately I have had the opportunity to work on many interesting projects in my brief career. Some of these are listed below for my own record keeping and anyone who might be interested in the same subjects.
Sensorless Synchronous Motor Control in Downhole Tools (Rice University, Schlumberger, SUPÉLEC)
Due to my relationship with Schlumberger, I investigated working with the company on a senior capstone design project as the design requirement for my electrical engineering degree. Thankfully, my advisors from Schlumberger, Dr. Albert Hoefel and Peter Swinburne, helped come up with a feasible project, that of utilizing so-called sensorless techniques to control permanent magnet synchronous motors (PMSMs) in downhole tools. Another serendipitous event occurred, that of Rice Prof. Fathi Ghorbel being appointed to a robotics chair within Schlumberger in Paris. Prof. Ghorbel wanted to expand the traditional senior design projects at Rice to having an international emphasis, so students from Rice work in conjunction with students at universities in Paris. For this project, our team here (Frank Havlak, Ellie Skorcheva, and myself) work with three students (Fadi Abousleiman, Fares Hantous, and Slim Besbes) from L'École Supérieure d'Électricité (SUPÉLEC).
FPGA Design for Motor Control in VHDL (Schlumberger Technology Corp.)
miniMIPS32 Processor Verilog FPGA Design (Rice University)
High Dynamic Range (HDR) Image Tone-Mapping (Rice University)
While in Prof. Richard Baraniuk's Introduction to Signals (ELEC301) course at Rice University, I worked on a team of four (Sarah McGee, Tianhe Yang, Robert Ortman, and myself) investigating methods for optimal mapping of HDR images back to displayable LDR images. Details of this can be found on Connexions under the Exploring High Dynamic Range Imaging module.
Networked Bootloader and Acquisition Framework for 8051 Microcontroller in Smart Sensors (Schlumberger Technology Corp.)
Source-Code Metrics Database (Schlumberger Technology Corp.)
Investigated the benefits of using source-code metrics, such as lines-of-code (LOC) type statistics, in a formally defined embedded software development process. After researching possible benefits of different statistics, designed and implemented a proof-of-concept collection system for C and C++ code, written as a web-application in PHP. AJAX was employed for the uploading of source code and dynamic updating of graphs of statistics.