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