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Saym I

- Research Program Mentor

MS at University of Wisconsin - Madison

Expertise

Aerospace controls, robotics, computer vision, unmanned aerial vehicles

Bio

I am primarily interested in how to make machines understand and move in their surroundings. From planes to quadcopters to robots, I love figuring out how to get them to do interesting tasks. I also really enjoy learning how to apply new technologies such as visual neural networks to improve their perception of the world. I truly enjoy the intersection between physics, engineering, and computer science to solve real-world problems. Outside of STEM, I actually really love learning about history and politics. I love to travel whenever I can, especially to national parks, and I am super close to having been to all 48 contiguous US states! I also like to document my adventures by taking pictures of all the cool places I've seen. This summer, I am trying to pick up skateboarding and kayaking. I do also want to become a better cook, because you can only have so much Taco Bell every week.

Project ideas

Project ideas are meant to help inspire student thinking about their own project. Students are in the driver seat of their research and are free to use any or none of the ideas shared by their mentors.

Autonomous car/drone

Have you ever wondered what goes into making a vehicle move by itself? In this project, you can take a deep dive into getting a simulated or real vehicle to move around.

Object Detection from a Depth Camera

Cameras such as the Kinect are able to not only capture images as RGB pixels, but also capture the depth of thousands of points in the image. However, these points (point cloud) often have so much data it can be hard to understand what's happening in a given scene. In this project, you can explore techniques to figure out where different objects are in the environment, such as neural networks or computer vision techniques.

Coding skills

Python, MATLAB, C++, C, ROS

Languages I know

Spanish, intermediate; Urdu, beginner

Teaching experience

I was an undergraduate course semester for two semesters mainly helping run discussion sections. I also did a semester mentoring a group of undergraduate computer science students on a semester-long game design project. I also worked as a teaching assistant for three semesters and a head teaching assistant this past semester.

Credentials

Work experience

Collins Aerospace (2018 - 2018)
Simulation Software Engineer Co-op
Boeing (2022 - Current)
Flight Controls and Software Engineer
Raytheon Technologies (2020 - 2021)
Software Engineering Intern
Visual Computing Lab (2021 - 2022)
Research Assistant

Education

University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign (UIUC)
BS Bachelor of Science (2020)
Aerospace Engineering
University of Wisconsin - Madison
MS Master of Science (2022)
Computer Science

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