122 lines
5.4 KiB
TeX
122 lines
5.4 KiB
TeX
\documentclass[12pt, letterpaper]{article}
|
|
|
|
% Packages:
|
|
\usepackage[
|
|
top=0.5in,
|
|
bottom=0.75in,
|
|
left=0.75in,
|
|
right=0.75in,
|
|
headheight=0pt,
|
|
headsep=0pt,
|
|
footskip=0.4in
|
|
]{geometry}
|
|
\usepackage{times} % Times New Roman font
|
|
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
|
|
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
|
|
\usepackage{setspace} % for single spacing
|
|
\usepackage{titlesec} % for customizing section titles
|
|
\usepackage[dvipsnames]{xcolor}
|
|
\definecolor{primaryColor}{RGB}{0, 79, 144}
|
|
\usepackage[
|
|
pdftitle={Wright Scholar Essay},
|
|
pdfauthor={Keshav Anand},
|
|
pdfcreator={LaTeX},
|
|
colorlinks=false,
|
|
hidelinks
|
|
]{hyperref}
|
|
\usepackage{iftex}
|
|
\usepackage{microtype} % Better text rendering
|
|
|
|
% Ensure PDF is machine readable:
|
|
\ifPDFTeX
|
|
\input{glyphtounicode}
|
|
\pdfgentounicode=1
|
|
\fi
|
|
|
|
% Settings:
|
|
\pagestyle{empty} % no header or footer
|
|
\setlength{\parindent}{0.5in} % standard paragraph indentation
|
|
\setlength{\parskip}{6pt} % no space between paragraphs
|
|
\singlespacing % single spacing
|
|
\frenchspacing % Better spacing after periods
|
|
|
|
% Custom title format for essay topic
|
|
\titleformat{\section}
|
|
{\normalfont\fontsize{12}{14.4}\selectfont\bfseries}
|
|
{}
|
|
{0pt}
|
|
{}
|
|
\titlespacing{\section}{0pt}{0pt}{6pt}
|
|
|
|
\begin{document}
|
|
|
|
\begin{center}
|
|
\textbf{\large Wright Scholar Essay (Topics 1 and 3)}
|
|
\end{center}
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
\vspace{12pt}
|
|
294 Squiggly red underlines. Nearly every line of my code had errors. Null
|
|
pointers, incompatible types, undefined variables, Gradle sync errors---I had
|
|
encountered them all. It was February 2024, my freshman year, and we had ten
|
|
minutes to take the field for our First Tech Challenge (FTC) League Finals.
|
|
My heart pounded as keys clattered beneath my flying fingers. My code was
|
|
broken, and for the finals, it had to work. The merciless clock ticked away,
|
|
and with seconds to go, I finally compiled the code. There was no time to
|
|
test, hardly any to breathe. We took the field, and my finger hovered over
|
|
the play button. Time paused. The buzzer sounded, and I pressed play. Success.
|
|
In two minutes and thirty seconds, we won.
|
|
|
|
Seven months earlier, I didn't know what a variable was. I was fully into
|
|
music, and programming was yet to cross my radar. When my friend started a
|
|
robotics team, I joined on a whim. It was that abrupt decision that started
|
|
my journey into robotics. Progress was painstakingly slow; it took me two
|
|
full months to make a motor turn. But gradually, I became hooked. Like a
|
|
sponge, I absorbed everything: tutorials, documentation, and even Stack
|
|
Overflow threads. Eventually, I taught myself enough Java to become a
|
|
functional FTC programmer.
|
|
|
|
As the season progressed, we became a competitive team, and my knowledge was
|
|
expanding in parallel. On that competition day, something just clicked. It
|
|
wasn't the win that truly made me happy. It was the realization that my own
|
|
code produced tangible outputs. At that very moment, I knew that I wanted to
|
|
continue working in a STEM field, and I was ready to keep coding on.
|
|
|
|
But that readiness was tested in September 2024. Somewhat naively, I decided
|
|
to build a machine learning model to predict gait patterns in Parkinson's
|
|
Disease for my sophomore-year Science Fair project. The only problem is that
|
|
I had no clue how. So I dove in: Python syntax, NumPy arrays, signal filtering,
|
|
feature extraction, and model architectures. I had entered unfamiliar territory,
|
|
and each concept I learned brought new confusion. After two months of relentless
|
|
reading, coding, and debugging, I managed to transform raw sensor data into a
|
|
working classification model. Somewhere between the first error message and
|
|
the final 96\% accuracy, I had begun to absorb a new discipline.
|
|
|
|
I could have stopped there, but I realized that a working model on my laptop
|
|
wasn't going to help any Parkinson's patients, and I needed to embed my model
|
|
into a complete hardware device. This task was beyond daunting, as I had to
|
|
venture into the foreign territory of hardware and electrical engineering.
|
|
With my engineering teacher guiding me, I eventually learned the basics. After
|
|
countless 2 AM KiCAD tutorial sessions, I finally had a working design for a
|
|
custom printed circuit board (PCB) housing a sensor and microcontroller. Two
|
|
weeks later, my PCB arrived, and after soldering all my components, it didn't
|
|
work. My heart sank. In desperation, I resoldered each joint carefully and
|
|
tried again. Somehow, it worked. After writing some C++ software for the
|
|
device, I had something that actually worked. The project eventually made it
|
|
to the International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF), placing 3rd in
|
|
Robotics and Intelligent Machines. What struck me most wasn't the placement,
|
|
but the fact that six months earlier, I wouldn't have understood any of it.
|
|
|
|
Throughout high school, I've taught myself many disciplines, from FTC
|
|
programming in Java to designing circuits. The Wright Scholar program provides
|
|
an opportunity to apply my skills to current and critical research. I'm
|
|
intrigued by AFRL's Sensors Directorate, where I hope to deepen my understanding
|
|
of signal processing while contributing to sensor exploitation technologies.
|
|
I'm equally drawn to Human Performance Wing's work with multimodal sensing to
|
|
monitor and enhance human performance. Moreso, the chance to work alongside
|
|
domain experts who can accelerate my growth as an engineer and developer is
|
|
invaluable to me. Whether working with sensor fusion or biomedical sensing,
|
|
as a sponge eager to learn, AFRL is exactly where I need to be.
|
|
|
|
\end{document} |