JUNIOR ECE @ OHIO STATE // SEEKING SUMMER 2027 INTERNSHIP
Hi! I'm an Electrical and Computer Engineering student at The Ohio State University
with hands-on experience in RF/analog circuits, wearable sensing systems, embedded
firmware, PCB design, and hardware verification.
Through two years of research at the ElectroScience
Laboratory and internship experience at
Medtronic (early-stage R&D) and
Johnson & Johnson MedTech (late-stage
product development), I developed skills in board-level design, early-stage
development prototyping, signal processing, debugging, VNA/oscilloscope validation,
geometry modeling, and regulated technical documentation.
Interested in contributing to consumer electronics hardware where sensors, electrical
systems, firmware, and product experience come together.
I care about how a product looks and feels in someone's hand, not just whether it
boots. I switched from neuroscience to ECE sophomore year because I wanted to build
the things that interface with people, and I've been chasing that ever since.
GPA 3.95 / 4.0B.S. ECE, FALL 2027HAROLD F. MATHIS MEMORIAL SCHOLAR IN EESTEP FELLOW · $2K RESEARCH FELLOWSHIP (2025)COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING DEPT. AMBASSADORELECTROSCIENCE LAB UNDERGRAD RESEARCHER
Contents: 2 sub-components · Interconnect: professional
ACTIVE
MEDTRONIC
R&D INTERN · 2026 · [LOCATION +]
Supported early-stage medical device R&D through
physiological signal processing and computational
modeling work. My projects involved processing PPG data, building analysis
workflows, and applying statistical methods to characterize signal behavior across
experimental conditions.
I developed modeling tools for vascular geometry studies and gained experience with
biomedical simulation (digital twin), parameterized geometry generation, and
research-oriented engineering workflows.
SKILL PINS
MATLAB SIGNAL PROCESSINGPPG DATA COLLECTIONLABCHARTSTATISTICAL ANALYSISBIOMEDICAL SIMULATIONDIGITAL TWINPARAMETERIZED GEOMETRYEARLY-STAGE R&D
R&D Intern · 2026
JOHNSON & JOHNSON MEDTECH
ELECTRICAL ENGINEER CO-OP · CINCINNATI · SPRING 2026
Worked on the DUALTO™ Surgical Energy System team, supported calibration
fixture testing, verification, and technical documentation for internal engineering
use. My work included creating operating procedures, contributing to software
validation documentation, and collecting test case data to support fixture
verification, with documentation formally reviewed and signed through the team's
internal document-control process.
Alongside the fixture work, I got to design a 4-layer ATmega32u4 development board,
where I gained skills in board design with KiCad and constructed a design plan within
a set time frame, including block diagram development, schematic design, PCB layout,
assembly, and bootloader flashing. This board is detailed further in the Projects
section below.
SKILL PINS
CALIBRATION FIXTURE TESTINGVERIFICATIONSW VALIDATION DOCUMENTATIONOPERATING PROCEDURESTEST CASE DATA COLLECTIONDOCUMENT CONTROLPCB SCHEMATICS + LAYOUTDEV BOARD BRING-UP
What it is: CIRCLE is a wearable, wireless
gaming platform that turns natural skin-to-skin touch into game input, where a single
input is formed by two players together. It's built for collaborative, controller-free
play for children with sensory disabilities, targeting the accessibility and
individuality gap left by handheld controllers and single-player game design.
Signal path: the system uses
Human Body Communication (HBC) via galvanic
coupling. A 12 MHz carrier is transmitted through skin contact; when two players touch,
a conductive path forms through the body and the Rx wristband recovers the signal.
Received power separates touch from no-touch states, and the wearable presents itself to
a tablet as a Bluetooth HID keyboard, so a handshake becomes a game input.
Tx / Rx chain: the Tx board
generates a square wave, shapes it through a low-pass filter to a clean 12 MHz sinusoid,
and drives the transmit electrode. On the receive side, a band-pass filter centered at
12 MHz rejects out-of-band noise, a limiting amplifier conditions the recovered signal,
and an ADC feeds the MCU, which packetizes state over BLE to the game.
Firmware: using the Zephyr BLE
example package, I converted the voltage change into an HID keyboard input. Depending
on the orientation of the two players' contact, the in-game spaceman moves left,
moves right, or shifts its gravity, so the bilateral system resolves three distinct
touch inputs. Low-latency input processing on the nRF52840 kept gameplay responsive
enough for a sensitive, high-speed rhythm game, and the BLE link from the peripheral
Rx to the central game device (iPad) held stable across
10+ continuous gameplay trials.
Progression & result: I moved
the bulky FSR + ESP32 prototype into a dual Tx/Rx architecture supporting four distinct
bilateral interaction states with minimal cross-interference. Extending the ground plane
lifted state agreement from 74.0% to 96.1% and
event match rate from 36.7% to 82.2%. Across 12 trials the touch/no-touch voltage delta
held steady across conditions and contact profiles (mean ΔV = 85.5 mV, median 99.5 mV).
PUBLICATION //
B. R. Wang, W. D. Kim, Y. Chang, Y. Zhang,
K. Swearingen, S. Swearingen, J. Boster, and A. Kiourti,
“Wearable Galvanic Coupling Sensors for Collaborative Interactive Gaming,”
IEEE International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation and USNC-URSI Radio
Science Meeting (AP-S/URSI), Detroit, MI, Jul. 12–17, 2026.
[+ add IEEE Xplore DOI once live]
Collaboration with OSU Dept. of Design and Nationwide Children's Hospital.
Human subjects work conducted under IRB #2023H0054.
Funding: OSU Discovery Themes, BETHA, CERF, GAHDT.
Bilateral touch input driving the spaceman character · three input states
RESEARCH ACTIVITIES
Denman Undergraduate Research Forum
THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY · MARCH 2026 · POSTER DESIGN & PREPARATION
Designed and prepared the CIRCLE poster for Ohio State's university-wide
undergraduate research forum, structuring the operating principle, hardware
architecture, and experimental results into a single narrative. Teammates presented
it at the forum while I was away on co-op.
Wearable Galvanic Coupling Sensors for Collaborative Interactive GamingElectroScience Laboratory · Dept. of Electrical & Computer Engineering · The Ohio State UniversityB. R. Wang, W. D. Kim, Y. Chang, Y. Zhang, K. Swearingen, S. Swearingen, J. Boster, A. Kiourti
STEP Signature Project · Undergraduate Research Fellowship
THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY · 2025 · $2,000 FELLOWSHIP
As part of Ohio State's Second-Year Transformational Experience Program, I
completed a semester-long proposal cohort and developed a self-designed
undergraduate research proposal around my wearable sensing work. Through STEP I
refined the project goals, research plan, budget, and professional development
outcomes for continuing the CIRCLE wearable sensor system.
This moved me beyond contributing to an existing lab project and toward thinking
intentionally about research ownership:
defining what I wanted to learn, which technical milestones mattered, and how the
project could support both engineering development and human-centered impact.
ABOUT STEP
A fellowship of up to $2,000 supporting a self-designed, experiential
learning project. Undergraduate Research is one of six eligible categories.
Proposal, abstract, budget, and consultant information are each reviewed and
approved before funding is awarded.
Presenting the STEP Signature Project poster
4-LAYER DEV BOARD · ATmega32u4
CUSTOM PCB · J&J MEDTECH CO-OP · SPRING 2026
An end-to-end PCB design project in KiCad, taken from block diagram to a working,
bootloader-flashed board.
The board is a 4-layer, 2000 × 700 mil ATmega32u4
(7×7 VQFN) dev board. Core blocks: USB-C for power and serial, a voltage regulator
feeding the MCU rail, an I²C level shifter into a proximity sensor, NeoPixel LEDs, an
oscillator, and a reset button. USB-C was chosen so the board could be powered,
programmed, and serial-debugged over a single connector, with the ISP pins
(SCK, PDO, PDI, RESET) mapped explicitly before layout.
Layout went through two full revisions after design review, tightening placement and
routing around the MCU. From there: wrote the assembly and test plans, ordered parts,
hand-assembled the board, inspected the QFN joints under a microscope, verified
continuity, and flashed the bootloader.
The board runs a closed-loop demo: the proximity sensor streams distance over I²C,
and the firmware maps that reading to NeoPixel brightness in real time.
