I like making things and doing experiments.

In middle school, I wondered how sound systems worked. I did some preliminary research about the inner workings of a speaker, and then I built a speaker of my own with a cylindrical magnet and a coil of wire. I made a rigid paper sleeve that moved along the magnet and wound the coil around it. Then, I attached an aluminum foil diaphragm to the paper sleeve. To structurally support the wobbly pieces of my crudely made speaker, I built a contraption using Lego blocks. Lastly, I trimmed an old headphone jack and connected my speaker to my iPad. The speaker worked! I could hear familiar sounds emanating from the diaphragm. But, it was barely audible and noisy. So, I sought help from my dad, who initially suggested using a stronger magnet and more windings, and I improved the materials with which I built the speaker. After applying these modifications, I could see a noticeable improvement in the quality and volume of sound from my speaker, but it was still not as loud as I wanted it to be. After learning about amplifier circuits online, I built a single-stage amplifier circuit using a Darlington transistor. Afterwards, the sound output was amazing! Through this experiment, I learned electromagnetism, electric circuits, transistor operation, and amplification. Even after several iterations, there’s room for improvement, such as creating multiple-stage amplifier circuits to boost the sound level and using separate speakers for low and high frequencies.

I’ve explored various science concepts each year for science fairs in middle school and high school. To study the bending of light around the edges of objects, I passed laser light of various frequencies through a narrow slit, observed the diffraction patterns it made, and analyzed their interference using geometry during fifth grade. After learning that blue light can disturb sleep, I performed experiments to determine the amount of “blueness” in household light sources (LED bulbs, computer monitors, phone screens) using a spectrophotometer during sixth grade. Subsequently, I wanted to explore the physics of sound, and, to investigate the principles behind sound reduction, I studied the reflection of sound waves through open tubes and the resulting amplification and attenuation due to interference during seventh grade. The latter two projects were recognized at the Synopsys Science Fair. In eighth grade, I conducted an experiment to determine the amount of fatigue in finger muscles caused by everyday tasks such as writing, texting or typing by recording electromyography signals and analyzing their frequency distribution.

One of my recent projects was about speeding up the design process of digital circuits. Having used the Arduino and the Raspberry Pi for some of my earlier experiments, I was curious about how they work and about the design of such electronic devices. This exploration led me to learn about the fascinating process of designing digital integrated circuits and their manufacture using semiconductors. A time-consuming step in the design process is determining the time it takes for the building blocks, called cells, of such integrated circuits to complete their task. This task is accomplished using a large number of transistor-level simulations of such cells. I explored a deep learning method to accelerate this task with promising results.

After completing this project, I was interested in investigating other applications of machine learning in the field of integrated circuit design. I reached out to Prof. Vidya Chhabria of Arizona State University and have been working as a research intern with her since November 2022. My current focus is on developing tools and methods to ensure correct operation and faster design turnaround time of integrated circuits, considering power delivery network (PDN) effects. For more information, please see the abstract in the link here.