112 lines
5.7 KiB
TeX
112 lines
5.7 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}{0pt} % 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}
|
|
|
|
% Essay content begins here
|
|
294 squiggly red underlines. Nearly every line of my code had errors. Null pointers,
|
|
incompatible types, undefined variables, Gradle sync errors---I had seen it all, and each error felt like a
|
|
dissonant chord demanding resolution. It was February 2024, my freshman year, and we had ten minutes to
|
|
take the field for our First Tech Challenge (FTC) final match. My heart raced as I thumped the keyboard in a
|
|
frenzy. My code was broken, and for the final match, it had to work. Time raced faster than it ever used to, and
|
|
I finally compiled the code.
|
|
There was no time to test, hardly any to breathe, and before I knew it, we were on the field with my index
|
|
finger hovering over the large play button. Time paused. I heard the buzzer and pressed play. Success.
|
|
In two minutes and thirty seconds, we became league champions.
|
|
|
|
It was almost hard to believe that seven months back, I didn't know what a variable was.
|
|
I was fully into music, and programming was not even an afterthought.
|
|
It was a mere coincidence that my neighbor (and good friend) decided to start a robotics team, and given the minimal investment, I
|
|
joined. Like nearly all of my endeavors, my FTC journey began with a Google search. I was learning at a snail's pace, and it
|
|
had taken me two months to simply make a motor move. Soon, I was hooked. Like a sponge, I was absorbing everything I had to learn,
|
|
and I had eventually taught myself enough Java to become a functional FTC programmer.
|
|
|
|
As the season progressed, my sponge was
|
|
soaked, and we were a top competitive team by February. On competition day, the lightbulb within me finally clicked.
|
|
The joy I experienced wasn't just from our robot picking up and scoring pixels, but from the fact that the code I had recently learn to write
|
|
was resulting in a tangible output that I could witness. It was that moment when I decided to pursue a STEM career. I was
|
|
no longer just a high school student; I was a STEM student, and I was ready to help change the world.
|
|
|
|
But that readiness was tested in September 2024. In a spur of ambitious insanity,
|
|
I had committed to building a machine learning model to predict gait patterns in Parkinson's Disease for my sophomore-year
|
|
Science Fair project. The problem: I had no clue how to. And so I learned. Python syntax, NumPy arrays, signal filtering,
|
|
feature extraction, and model architectures. I had entered a brand new domain, and each concept seemed to confuse me in a different way.
|
|
After two months of painfully laborious learning, coding, and debugging, I was finally able to transform raw sensor data into a
|
|
functional and accurate classification model. Somewhere between the first error message and the final 96\% accuracy, I
|
|
had managed to absorb a new discipline by pushing myself into unfamiliar waters.
|
|
|
|
If it weren't for my ambition, I would have stopped there. Unfortunately, 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 land of hardware and electrical engineering. With my
|
|
engineering teacher guiding me, I slowly learned everything I needed. After dozens of 2 AM KiCAD tutorial binge sessions,
|
|
I finally had a working
|
|
design for a fully custom printed circuit board (PCB). Two weeks later, my PCB arrived, and after soldering all my
|
|
components, it didn't work. My heart sank. I touched up all the joints with my soldering iron and tried again. Success.
|
|
I wrote some quick software in C++, and I finally had a working end-to-end implementation for my final solution. After
|
|
my project made it to the International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF), the judges were impressed by the full
|
|
end-to-end implementation, and my efforts were finally rewarded when I won 3rd in Robotics and Intelligent Machines at ISEF.
|
|
|
|
Throughout my high-school life, I have strived to constantly learn new things, which is why I am so excited about the
|
|
Wright Scholar opportunity. From tinkering in my bed, I can start working on relevant research problems this Summer,
|
|
which would exponentially increase my learning and comprehension of these subjects. From cutting-edge
|
|
biomedical computing to sensor processing to cybersecurity, AFRL offers exciting venues for me to apply my knowledge.
|
|
For a sponge who lives to learn, AFRL can serve as a reservoir of knowledge, and I can't wait to absorb new information with
|
|
domain experts.
|
|
|
|
|
|
\end{document} |