This fellowship was not granted
In the final stretch of an all-state high school basketball career, I developed stress fractures so abnormal that the oncologist, grasping for explanations, ordered a biopsy on both shins. The screeching sound of the surgeon's drill shredding its way into my legs was almost as sharp as the pain caused by a full-ride to Cornell being ripped away from a first-generation college student.
Little did I know I would be earning a BS in electrical engineering in the following 3 years, even while dual enrolling for my Master of Science during the 3rd year and finishing with a 3.96 GPA. As I pursue a PhD in high frequency devices as a Doctoral Academy fellow at the University of Arkansas, it's more clear than ever that this was the first of many experiences that will lead me on the path to building a bleeding-edge technology company in integrated microwave photonics (IMWP) design.
Defense Industry Experience
It is safe to say that my experiences at one of the world's leading defense contractors in Northrop Grumman have influenced my future goals above all. While interning at the autonomous systems center of excellence in sunny San Diego, I spent most hours referencing MIL-STD-464 guidelines for EMC effects and hosting back-to-back meetings to address comments by the Italian DAAA authorities.
Looking back, my experience on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization contract provided a thorough introduction into the cultural dynamics in international business. In addition to the relative skepticism about self-flying planes, the employees of the DAAA are often held personally liable for mishaps — a much tenser employer agreement than we are familiar with in the United States. A combination of these factors made certification efforts very strenuous, but my hard work as a leader for the EMI/EMC airworthiness certification effort would prove invaluable as I geared up for a bigger role the following summer.
The Desert Flight Test
At 3 am on a Friday morning, I switched my phone into airplane mode as we drove into the desert, making sure to conceal my location. A few hours later I sat in a headset with the pilot and a few others as the unrivaled aircraft was stalled in over 30 scenarios according to the test cards.
While witnessing one feature of the aircraft in action, I was in complete shock. Immediately, the impact of technology on the mission and the individual warfighter was evident and measurable, leading me to understand the criticality of my craft. Many experiences of this sort at Northrop Grumman contributed to my ability to quantify the leaps in improvement that can be made with my research in high frequency devices.
IMWP circuits will allow hundreds of thousands of feet of cable to be replaced by radio over fiber, saving spare pounds for additional payloads in the process. This elimination of crosstalk cancels shielding requirements and reduces bonding requirements which equates to savings in certification efforts. This exposure to the end-application of my research gave me the confidence and ability to pursue my goal of building a company that can deliver task-oriented design solutions for IMWP, the fundamental technology of the next 20 years.
Early Career: Renewable Energy
Before taking on bigger assignments at Northrop Grumman, I was climbing wind turbines in the energy industry at a company called NextEra Energy. As an intern in the Low Voltage Electrical Fleet, I had the opportunity to play an important role in replacing the converter control unit, a component that was essential for the wind fleet across the nation.
I traveled to Pennsylvania to gather data that was needed off of the GE 2.5MW turbine, and returned to headquarters to analyze it. As a freshman in college I delivered above expectations and made a big step toward huge savings for the company. Upon my exit, I coordinated with a site technician to devise a way to get our uninterruptible power supplies SCADA monitored. By monitoring the health of the uninterruptible power supplies, faulty units can be detected and repaired so they are operable in case of an outage.
This internship experience eventually led to me being named both a scholar and a fellow of Tau Beta Pi. While I took away knowledge about utility operations and the power market in renewable energy, the experience gave me context. Growing up in a low income area, I never knew what an engineer looked like or what they actually did; now I could envision myself in this career.
Research Foundation
Upon returning to college as a sophomore after gaining experience in renewables, Dr. Moss presented me an opportunity to conduct undergraduate research under the NSF-sponsored Future Renewable Electric Energy Delivery and Management (FREEDM) program. My assignment was to improve battery performance for lithium air batteries by addressing the shortcomings of the cathodic utilization.
Such accomplishments could provide a reliable system with 10 times the energy density of lithium ion batteries. The electrochemical nature of the research meant observing experiments in order to understand how mild deviations during the electroless deposition of catalysts on the electrode surface might affect end results. The work concluded that the Mott Schottky analysis can be used as a quick characterization method to estimate the performance of an electrode.
These results are significant because dozens of electrochemical catalysts are evaluated for their usability in lithium air batteries, so it is increasingly useful to easily filter out which electrodes may be candidates. These academic experiences contributed to my reception of the Student Academic Award at the Black Engineer of the Year Awards. Without this exposure to research and graduate level students, it is unlikely that I would have had the boldness or desire to pursue a PhD directly after undergraduate, or even pursue graduate school at all.
Learning to Present
My research as part of the FREEDM program also enhanced my presentation skills. On top of being the only junior amongst PhD candidates, Dr. Zheng, a professor known for his remarkable merit and plain-spokenness, had just entered the room. I was in the process of transitioning to the next slide when I was cut off: "What's the control variable in the experiment?" he questioned impatiently. "There's no baseline for analysis in these experiments," he barked confusingly.
Sweat trickled down my legs when I spoke up: "it's a literature review, sir" — the room giggled. Over the next year I took strides in presenting my research. Later on, I was asked to give the opening address at the homecoming convocation to thousands of people. After a shaky start, I nailed the speech and the thrill afterward made me want to do it again immediately. This training paid off handsomely during the senior design reviews and presentations that I would eventually deliver at Northrop Grumman.
Looking Forward
As I began my PhD studies, I plan to leverage my environment to become a global contributor that can deliver projects that bring prosperity to people abroad. Using the seasoned web development skills that I obtained while building a startup during my undergraduate, I'm gearing up to launch a project at Runwae.com. Runwae is built on the observation that the internet has turned popularity into a currency.
Celebrities accept huge checks from brands in return for a small post on their Instagram page featuring the brand. The goal of Runwae is to scale down the market created by Instagram in order to financially profit more everyday users. The neat thing about this market is that there is no source or supplier. The fact that the value of the person is determined by public perception means that anyone with internet connectivity can make a serious earning, even in developing countries. Graduate school surrounds me with the user base for the website and bright minds with ideas for improvement.
Another goal that graduate school will help me achieve aims to benefit college graduates in particular. During a meeting for our Northrop Grumman-sponsored senior design project, I listened to my senior design teammates discuss their different job offers and I noticed that very few of them attempted to negotiate the unsatisfactory offers. This was alarming to me because I noticed that some students were leaning toward offers with a higher starting pay and passing up on the company that actually seemed to be the better match.
Though mentors have expressed to me that you should negotiate the best offer for yourself under reasonable circumstances, I had never heard this subject brought up in the resume workshops or employee dinners that many colleges provide for professional preparation. I contacted a close friend interning at NASA JPL and together we decided to conduct research for a full year before organizing notes and lessons into pages of a book. So far, employees with 20 plus years of experience in talent acquisition allowed us to interview them. I expect this project to benefit college graduates and industry by steering more employees toward a fulfilling position. Furthermore, the early stages of my future technology company will benefit from my training on how to attract and appropriately compensate talented individuals.
Ultimately, early internships and research experiences affirmed my interests and led me to pursue expertise in graduate school. However, exposure to global defense contracts and restricted technology revealed the broader impact of my craft and thus, instilled an accountability to perfect it. Along with the efforts that I've undertaken to benefit others, these experiences have inspired me to build a company that delivers enabling products for the low-cost design of application-specific MWP integrated circuits. The introduction to IMWP will likely face many of the same obstacles as IC technology, including the end of rapid improvement. The company that I plan to build will deliver solutions similar to those that DARPA is currently sponsoring for IC, except for IMWP and at the early stages of the technology.