Bio
I have been working at ORNL for a bit over three years at this point, and in those three years I have had the pleasure to contribute to a wide variety of projects spanning a large spread of subject areas. It has been incredible to see the proposals our group has set forth put into practice via our collaborative efforts to implement them. Computer science is such a broad field with a massive variety of applications, and my time here has allowed me to explore many of them.
A large part of the first couple years were spent leveraging Internet of Things (IoT) technologies for a multitude of applications. I assisted in a project in which we gauged the effectiveness of multiple different wireless communication methods in rural areas, such as broadband (Starlink, 5G), LoRa, Bluetooth, among others. These tests contributed to the construction of asbestos detectors for the USDA Forest Service. These sensors leveraged a long range low power wide area network LoRaWAN enabling them to transmit data efficiently from up to 10 kilometers away, even more when using relays. I assembled and wrote the firmware for each one, along with creating a system to store all collected data on the cloud using InfluxDB for further analysis and automatic anomaly detection.
Most recently I have had the opportunity to work closely with the development of a ground control system for small unmanned aerial systems (sUAS) that has the capability to be integrated with existing HMIs such as a utility's SCADA. It has been demonstrated to be capable of autonomously planning a mission given a destination along with controlling multiple sUAS simultaneously in coordinated flight. The platforms used for this project are customizable and the flight controller firmware itself is open source, allowing for significant modularity in the intended missions and uses for each sUAS. Much like the aforementioned, this system is capable of sending and storing information via IoT pub/sub protocols in a database for future examination. Not only is sensor data stored and streamed, but also all relevant telemetry information is kept for the purpose of automatically diagnosing faults in the drones themselves, such as excessive battery decay, component failures, or GPS errors.
Education
2021; High Point University- BSc in Computer Science
In Progress; Tennessee Tech University - MSc in Computer Science, High Performance Computing