Early Beginnings
I became fascinated by engineering research in my early teens. At the time, I put together a magnetic propulsion experiment using a piece of Styrofoam that I found on the beach and wire from an old transformer. As I plugged my device into the wall electrical outlet, my engineering career began with a spark!!
Education
I am a Big Ten fan, having attended Northwestern University (NU) in Chicago and Penn State University (PSU). Although I attended NU for the first two years of my PhD, our entire team transferred to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center (Cedars) in West-Hollywood, California, and I completed my degree at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). While at Cedars, I conducted my graduate research in Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) for breast & prostate cancer, imaging at the molecular level, with focus in hardware and software development. I received my master's in Electrical Engineering (EE) at PSU, with focus in electronic and piezoelectric material linear motors (PZT motors). I obtained a Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) Engineering Certificate from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), and the most fun course work I ever had in Radio Frequency (RF) Communications. I obtained my bachelor's in EE at San Diego State University (RF), with a focus in electronic circuit applications in electrophysiology and finger force measurements.
Engineering
My first job as a teenager was working at Electromar
as an electronic technician. I started out sweeping the shop, then moved on
to programming in Basic and repairing Echo Sounders, Sonars, and Radars. It was the greatest job for
an eager-to-learn engineering teenager like myself. My next jobs were with
Helle Engineering,
Ectron Corp, Air Force Space Surveillance System,
(AFSSS) San Diego station (contractor),
Cadence Designs Systems
(Cadence), and Testedge Inc
(TE).
As a technician at Helle Engineering, I learned to build and repair piezoelectric pingers for underwater detection and communication.
Then, at Ectron, I became experienced in diagnosing, troubleshooting, and calibrating electronic circuits in
Thermocouple simulators/calibrators. I also became skilled in Data Collection and Automation using
HP Basic and GPIB. In my next position at the AFSSS, I learned the
ins and outs of large scale remote sensing and satellite detection. I also began producing quality circuit
designs, C/C++, and LabView
software programs. Later, as a senior engineer at Cadence and Testedge,
I became adept at Test Engineering with mixed signal circuit designs, high speed data collection,
automation, and C/C++ programming.
Pre-pandemic, I was product development engineer at Intel working on the quantification of physiological phenomena and CPU validation
Today
Currently, I am a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania school of medicine. My research focus is in
the development of algorithms for precision medicine through the digital quantification of diseased tissue in histopathology.
More specifically, the use of techniques such as image color normalization, statistical analysis, and machine learning
techniques for the advancement of detailed characterization of disease in the histopathology domain