Born in 1982 in the state of Maryland, I grew up in the rural town of Boonsboro. While some would be enamored by the Arcadian life of an agricultural town, I was not. From a very young age, I exhibited an insatiable desire for knowledge that could not be satisfied in such an environment. However, I still found those who were willing to assist me and served to shape who I am.
Spring of 2000 I graduated from high school and enrolled at the University of Maryland that Fall for the study of electrical engineering. This major wasn't selected under pretext of natural skill, future earnings, social status, or the mere prerequisite college serves in the modern world. I chose my major deliberately as the subject of my fascination and academic interest. While physics or another science may have been a superior choice for one interested only in the nature of things, such musings on the past are best left forgotten.
Graduating four short years later, I remained as a graduate student of electrical engineering at Maryland to continue my intellectual endeavor. For guidance, financial support, and a general framework for study, I joined the MEMS Sensors and Actuators Lab under the direction of Reza Ghodssi. My initial work has focused on the use of dynamically tunable microstructures to wavelength-selectively filter infrared from guided optics. For the lay person, this means to build a device to pick out a single “color” from a spectrum of multiple “colors” coming out of a fiber optic. This work is now winding down as I prepare to complete my master’s thesis. In the near future, I will be studying the scavenging of energy from ambient vibrations for my Ph.D. For the lay person, this means to trying power electronics from the vibrations present all around us.
Personal Philosophy
Likely derived from the inherently conservative upbringing of a rural community, even while being irreligious in thought, I tend to interpret and judge the world morally: the purity of purpose is as important as the purity of action. The virtue in any action is diminished if it was performed for convenience, praise, or personal benefit. And all righteousness is stripped when an otherwise good deed serves but to mask ill intent.
Actions need be judged by their consequence; people, by the purpose underlying their actions. For the best of men, it is not sufficient to do good works, but to be correct in thought so that good works are the natural consequence of ourselves and there is no room for evil.