Beaver Works Avionics

As a member of the avionics team for the inaugural capstone project of MIT–Lincoln Labs Beaver Works, I integrated the autopilot system with the airframe of a new large-scale radar-sensing remote-piloted aircraft. One of the last things I did before I graduated from MIT was wire this flight harness and perform the hardware-in-the-loop test. I can still feel the intense sleep deprivation…and the thrill of victory when we verified transmission of all autopilot signals.

MIT Beaver Works inaugural class

Akustica, from MATLAB to SPICE

As a longtime lover of MATLAB, I was thrilled to get the chance to spend some time translating Leo L. Baranek's Acoustics into a digital microphone model made up of MATLAB code. Then, I took it a step further, developing an equivalent circuit representation in SmartSPICE that produced both frequency and noise response. Using these models, the acoustics teams and integrated circuit teams at Akustica could connect their designs seamlessly.

Edgerton Lab Synthetic Schlieren

I loved learning strobe photography techniques in the MIT Edgerton Center, reproducing many of Doc Edgerton’s original experiments under the guidance of Professor Jim Bales. For my final project, I designed several experiments to prove the feasibility of a portable setup using synthetic schlieren techniques to image fluid flows with varying refractive indices. Our first try—visualizing pressure differentials from a champagne cork popping—didn’t quite work, but when we tried our techniques with a candle flame, we nailed it. Definitely worth using the fancy high-speed video camera!

Still of high-speed video showing heat waves emanating from a candle flame, from Nivair’s synthetic schlieren project