Maker at Heart.
I am a first-year graduate student at MIT studying mechanical engineering with a focus in musical robotics. I received my undergraduate degree from MIT in mechanical engineering as well in June 2023. I’m interested in finding new ways to integrate music and technology.
After coming to study at MIT, I participated in a variety of clubs and opportunities, including MakeMIT, HackMIT, competitive rowing, the MIT Symphony Orchestra, as well as DJing at MIT social events (one of my favorites).
Aside from academic endeavors, I have been learning German for 4 years, both in high school and at MIT, playing violin for 10 years, and have been speed-cubing for longer (avg 30 second solve). Hacking on Raspberry Pis as well as microcontrollers like Arduinos, Teensys, and ESP8266s is a common pastime of mine, and I also partake in gaming, longboarding, flying drones, building PCs. and making Minecraft Servers.
Work Experience
Music Tech Researcher
Currently I am continuing my Research at the MIT Media Lab by developing new sound reactive displays with novel materials, as well as designing hyperinstruments, which use electronics to increase musical expression.
The picture above is my ferrofluid instrument, which I designed and performed for the conclusion of my Reimagining Hyperinstruments class.
Hardware Engineer
For Spring and Summer of 2021 I worked on MIT Hyperconnected at the MIT Media Lab, which is a collaboration with Harman to design the next generation of virtual concert.
My role was designing consumer-facing interfaces and hardware for a more connected, sound-responsive experience.
Software Engineer
For the fall of 2020, I was , working on the TA Futures project at the MIT Media Lab under grad students Nikhil Singh and Manaswi Mishra. My responsibilities include developing software and processes for remote performance and interactive music systems, audio editing and analysis (usually in Reaper), all in the context of a large-scale virtual collaborative music experience. This project is housed under the Opera of the future group at the MIT Media Lab, led by Tod Machover, who I previously worked with during the Toronto city symphony project as a violinist with the MIT Symphony Orchestra. Much of my audio editing was working on a new city symphony project for the city of Chennai, India.
Underwater Robotics Engineer
For the summer of 2021, I was in an internship/TAship at MIT Lincoln Laboratory. I worked in the Advanced Undersea Systems and Technology department on improving autonomy of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) using Robot Operating System (ROS).
For one month of the internship I was a Teaching Assistant for Beaverworks Summer Institute (BWSI) for the Autonomous Underwater Vehicle challenge. I helped teach a virtual class of high performing high school seniors from across the country how to program a Raspberry Pi in the payload of a Sandshark AUV do vision processing to navigate between red and green LED buoys that I designed. We ran student’s code on the actual vehicle in the MIT Pool!
Python Lab Assistant
For the fall semester of 2020, I was a lab assistant for MIT’s Fundamentals of Programming (or 6.009 for MIT peeps). Since I had performed well taking the class the previous semester, I was offered the opportunity to apply to be a lab assistant. I spent most of my time helping students in office hours who were stuck in the debugging process, and gave students who have completed the weekly assignments checkoffs. During these checkoffs I looked through students’ code to make sure it met the requirements, and discussed their implementations, what was unclear from the code syntax, as well as the merits of other approaches.
Controls Lab Assistant
Since fall 2021, I have been a lab assistant for MIT’s Dynamics and Controls II (2.004). I set up labs and helped students debug their controls systems in class, as well as graded assignments.
We do PID and Full State control for a flywheel plant, moved a magnetically levitated ball in a sine wave, and had competitions to see who could balance their unstable Segway robots in place the longest.
Code Sensei
From March 2018 to May 2019 I was a Code Sensei at Code Ninjas in College Station, TX. Code ninjas is a place where 7-14 year-old students come after school to learn to code, and I helped students troubleshoot as they went through the curriculum in scratch and javascript.
During the summer of 2019, I was a summer instructor for Code Ninjas, where I led two team-based camps in drones and robotics, developing curriculum for both. Having had experience designing robots in a team environment during high school, I taught them many design principles and methodologies that helped them to understand how their robots interacted with the world.
Project Mentor
For the summer of 2020, I was a full time project mentor for MIT’s Full Steam Ahead Into Summer program, “a virtual summer program and academic enrichment opportunity that combines hands-on exploration, project design, and skill building in STEM subjects,” geared towards rising 7th, 8th, and 9th grade students in Massachusetts. In the morning, I taught a group of 4 students using “Minecraft Math” (as I call it), a method I developed by teaching math lessons in Minecraft, where the students were much more engaged. During the afternoon I taught a group of 9-18 students various STEM topics, drawing upon my experience designing robots in high school as I taught them the design process and assisted them as they built their projects remotely. I also ran two Minecraft servers for students to join during their free time.
Tutor
I tutored, teaching math, system design, and redstone circuitry in Minecraft. Much of my time was spent making traditionally boring math concepts more engaging and relevant, and I teach good design practices, like creating small systems and testing them before combining them into a larger system.
The picture above is an example — a flush door that only opens when you drop an Item of a specific type on a given spot. It required the separate testing and integrating of three systems (door, pulse extender, and item filter).