About Me

I am a master’s student of electrical engineering at Virginia Tech. It has always fascinated me how electricity and magnetism govern such a wide range of applications, from computers to power lines. Following my fascination, I joined the Computer Engineering program at Virginia Tech and spent my undergrad pursuing a wide range of topics, from C++ programming to analog circuit design. By my junior year, I had developed a good understanding of digital design and programming, but wanted to learn more about analog circuit design. With this in mind, I joined the Multifunctional Integrated Circuits and Systems (MICS) group at Virginia Tech under Dr. Dong Ha’s mentorship. In the MICS group, I developed an interest in the challenges of collecting, processing, and transmitting data through IoT sensor nodes, given severe system resource and power constraints.

At present, I lead a pioneering project for my research group to develop a wireless sensor node (WSN) that monitors livestock behavior. We aim to predict the health of cattle through tracking their behavior and vital signs and make livestock raising more efficient. Using edge intelligence on our WSN to lower its power consumption allows us to use LoRa, a long-range and low bandwidth wireless protocol, to transmit data. We observed a 50-fold reduction in power consumption and have submitted our work to the ISCAS 2022 conference.

My primary research interest is edge intelligence for IoT edge nodes. I want to push AI to the network edge to unleash the true potential of edge big data. However, implementing complex models, such as DNNs, on resource-limited embedded systems is challenging, and it excites me. With my experience in high-level programming, embedded systems, digital and analog circuit design, I am interested in using these skills in tandem to solve this complex problem.

Besides my passion for designing environment-friendly technologies, I am an avid hiker. The Blue Ridge and the Allegheny mountains played a significant role in my growing up. As a scout, I have often hiked, camped, and canoed in their wilderness and rivers. Virginia Tech’s location in the New River Valley offered me an opportunity to explore wilderness during weekends. Over the five years at Virginia Tech, hiking with friends and family is my favorite pastime over weekends.