For the Winter 2009 offering of the University of Washington CSE Software for Embedded Systems course, I designed a laboratory assignment around electric field sensing. In the lab, students used an 8-bit microcontroller to accomplish the following:

• generate a waveform at a specific frequency to drive a resonant transmitter
• synchronously sample a received signal with an analog/digital converter
• demodulate the received signal in software to recover the signal magnitude
• use pulse-width modulation to drive an RGB LED, varying its color with the sensed distance between the sensor and the user’s hand

I was a TA for the Software for Embedded Systems course for three quarters. I developed lab assignments and custom hardware for the class, and assisted students in the lab. I received an honorable mention for the Bandes Memorial Award for Excellence in Teaching and a nomination for the University of Washington College of Engineering Community of Innovators Awards for my work.