Jiaqi (David) Zhu

Education

University of California, Santa Barbara

Bachelor of Science, Physics • 2019 — Expected December 2022

Relevant courses include Advanced Analog and Digital Electronics, Scientific Computing and Programming, Algorithms, Quantum Mechanics, Electromagnetism, Linear Algebra, Differential Equations, Classical Mechanics.

Experience

UCSB Experimental Cosmology Group

Undergraduate Research Assistant • May 2021 — Present

Responsible for designing, implementing, assembling and verifying power, RF and embedded control systems for the Group’s various projects

One of seven teams nationwide advancing to NASA’s Watts on the Moon Challenge’s Phase 2, Level 2, and receiving $200,000 in NASA funding to develop a high-power, low-loss, and long-distance power transmission and energy management system on the Moon.
One of fifty teams nationwide advancing to NASA’s MINDS Challenge to design a high efficiency Lunar dust mitigation system.
One of three undergraduate students hired by the Group in Summer 2022 for their exceptional work.
Oversaw and directed the overhauling Wafer-scale Spacecraft project and its codebase transition from C to MicroPython for lower barrier of entry.
Assembled and troubleshooted various PCBs using reflow oven, precise electronics measurement equipment and performed fault analysis and component level repair as needed.
Mentored new students to become productive members of the Group.
Collaborated with the Lab Technician and other teams to ensure on-time completion of projects.

AIA Information Technologies, Co., Ltd.

Software Engineering Intern • May 2020 — October 2020

Led the development of an in-house optical character recognition and information extraction system based on Tesseract, SpaCy and various other frameworks, with more than 80% successful identifications, greatly reducing the need for manual review.
Assisted in the development of SAS Viya based data visualization project for industrial clients.
Oversaw data classiﬁcation on client information for preparation of use in machine learning applications.

Projects

NASA Watts on the Moon Challenge

Electronics Engineer • Summer 2022 — Present

Designed and implemented power management, distribution, and energy storage solutions for deployment on lunar surface.

Designed high voltage DC/DC power conversion circuitry for low-loss long distance power transmission.
Designed energy storage and management system for use in a low temperature hard vacuum.

Wafer-scale Spacecraft

Electronics System Engineer • 2021 — Present

Engineered prototypes of interstellar robotic system based on consumer-grade electronic components

Designed RP2040 MCU based development boards using KiCad and Altium Designer
Ported Micropython firmware to existing STM32-based development boards
Collaborated with other team members to ensure on-time progress of the project.
Optimized the bill of material (BOM) for the boards to ensure availability and ease of procurement
Developed Micropython code that runs on the boards
Mentored new team members to become productive part of the organization.

Moonbeam - Beamed Lunar Power System

Electronics System Engineer • Summer 2022 — Present

Part of NASA Lunar Surface Technology Research (LuSTR) Program

Designed, implemented and validated miniature (10mm by 10mm) switch-mode power supply and energy harvesting system that includes cell-level Indium-gallium-arsenide (InGaAs) photovoltaic system with maximum power point tracking (MPPT), lithium-ion battery management, long-range wireless communication, and communication buses, including I2C, SPI and UART.

Gamble For Crisis Business Competition Online Trading System

Co-designer and Operations Engineer • 2018 — 2019

Directed the technical aspects of an online trading system that handled 2,000 simultaneous online users

Implemented back-end functionality with MySQL database
Responsible for live troubleshooting for the contestants while the competition is underway

Skills

Electronics Engineering and Embedded System Design

Designed, implemented, assembled and validated more than a dozen PCBs during my time at the UCSB Deepspace Lab. Most of the boards I designed are focused on achieving desired functionality in as small a footprint as possible.

Electronic Design Automation (EDA) Softwares

Proficient in Altium Designer and KiCad.

Communication Bus Operation

Designed systems with I2C, SMBus, UART, SPI buses for communicating between sensors and MCU.

Coding in Python and C++

Fluent in Python, MicroPython and Adafruit CircuitPython. Have continuously practiced coding through personal projects since 2013. Notable libraries that I have proficiency in include NumPy, SciPy, Tesseract, and SpaCy NLP framework. Also proficient in C++.

Rapid prototyping

Proficient in the use of maker hardware such as microcontroller boards, breadboards and off-the-shelf sensor breakout boards to rapidly design proof-of-concept (POC) systems.

Research and writing

Researching a wide variety of topics and writing detailed papers, articles and reports.

DevOps

Source management (Git), web server development and deployment, CI/CD (this site is delivered through CI/CD), automation, system maintenance.

Language

Native Mandarin Chinese speaker, fluent in written and spoken English and Cantonese.