I am an electrical engineer and research scientist in the College of Engineering at Virginia Commonwealth University, working in computational electromagnetics, machine-learning-assisted optimization, and embedded device security. My Ph.D. in engineering focused on machine learning and optimization for antenna design; the dissertation, on machine learning assisted optimization for the calculation and automated tuning of antennas, is still the thread through most of what I do: getting a design loop to run end to end without a person driving every step of it. Before that: an M.S. in computer science and B.S. degrees in electrical engineering and in physics, all at VCU.
Alongside the research is a second line of work in instrument software: browser front ends and Python libraries for the RF test equipment I use, each with a simulated device built in so that the tools can be used and taught with whether or not the hardware is on the desk.
Teaching ties both of these together. I run the medical device security testbed in the college, where student researchers learn hardware interfacing, firmware extraction, and reverse engineering on real equipment, and much of the public material here is the open half of units built for courses. Several of the lab tools exist because a course needed them.
Research
- Computational electromagnetics and antenna design
- Machine learning assisted optimization: swarm, derivative-free, and surrogate-assisted methods
- Machine learning and large language models for electromagnetics and RF design
- Software-defined radio and digital signal processing
- RF, medical device, and embedded device security; firmware extraction and reverse engineering
- Engineering education
Papers, posters, and news coverage are on the Publications page; the software behind them is on Projects.
Teaching
Courses. Fundamentals of electrical and computer engineering (an introductory lab course where students build and measure working analog and digital circuits, and a second course on static electric and magnetic fields), and microwave engineering (a graduate course on RF components, antenna arrays, and measurement with network, signal, and spectrum analyzers). Earlier, as a teaching assistant and co-instructor: medical devices, assistive technology, electric circuits, and introduction to engineering.
Vertically Integrated Projects. Multi-semester undergraduate research teams that I design the curricula for and mentor: medical device security (hardware reverse engineering, firmware extraction, wireless communication), machine learning and mathematical optimization for RF design, large language models for electromagnetics, and, earlier, the smart city testbed. These teams are where the cryptography, reverse engineering, computer vision, and machine learning units under Projects come from.
Senior capstone. Faculty mentor for design teams including a modular telehealth cart for disaster relief, a low-field portable MRI, and successive Little Ram Pantries projects.
The browser-based lab instruments and wireless demos built for these courses are collected at interactive-hardware-interfacing.
Elsewhere
- GitHub — code, tools, and course material
- Google Scholar
- ORCID
- ResearchGate
- LinkedIn — the best way to reach me about collaboration
- On the air as KY4ZR (Amateur Extra); volunteer examiner and contest lead with Ham Radio Village
About this site
Project documentation, write-ups, and a running record of what I am building. Everything here is open source unless it says otherwise; licenses are on the individual repositories. The Bookshelf is an annotated shelf of references I actually reach for (constantly being updated).