Involvements & Activities
Ubiquitous Communications and Networking Lab (UCaN Lab)
Upon joining UMass Boston in September 2017, I began development of the UCaN Lab. The lab is still in the startup phase; but I am looking forward to continuing my research in wireless communications and networks. Keep an eye out for new developments from my work at UMB!
SDR Boston
When I started working with Software Defined Radio (SDR) and the GNURadio software toolkit in 2010, there weren't a lot of outlets for SDR users in the Boston area. In order to bring together a group of users and spread information about the interesting SDR work going on in the region, Neel Pandeya, Dr. Alex Wyglinski and I organized SDR Boston and the New England Workshop for Software Defined Radio. In the 6 years since we first organized the event, we have increased attendance annually to over 100 attendees from academia, industry and government. We have also held the event at various universities (Boston University, Northeastern University, Worcester Polytechnic Institute), earned sponsorship from various companies (e.g., Mathworks, National Instruments, MediaTek, Analog Devices, Xilinx), and attracted prominent keynote speakers from the SDR field (e.g., Dr. Jeffrey Reed, Dr. Tom Rondeau).
Engineering Research Center for Lighting Enabled Systems and Applications
The Engineering Research Center for Lighting Enabled Systems and Applications (LESA) is a National Science Foundation funded research center with the objective of creating intelligent "Lighting Systems that Think" in order to promote improved health, productivity, and energy efficiency. The ERC is a collaborative group of universities and industry partners with the core academic members being Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Boston University, and University of New Mexico. My involvement with the ERC at BU focused on development of Visible Light Communication (VLC) enabled lighting systems that provide both lighting and wireless data communication. I worked as a postdoctoral researcher in the ERC from 2015 to 2017, and I was involved as a research assistant during my PhD from 2009 to 2015. In my current position, I continue to collaborate with ERC students and faculty.
Summer Challenge
Summer challenge is an educational outreach program held at Boston University where high school students have the opportunity to attend college style courses and experience college life. I was involved with the "Intro to EE" course from 2012 to 2017 and I was a course instructor from 2014 to 2017. In the course, we developed the students' knowledge of circuits and signal processing concepts using the analog discovery platform and guided them through the development of an Arduino Shield for visible light communication.
EdX Course Development
I am a big fan of massive open online courses (MOOCs) and the growing availability of educational videos offered through various online sources. I've recently begun developing a few courses on optical wireless communications and heterogeneous networks and I'm planning to create one or two short courses through the EdX platform over the next few months.
AJM Enterprises
As much as I enjoy working in a lab / office, I also like to fit in a little bit of manual labor every once and a while. I've been helping out with my father's business for as long as I can remember. While it's an electrical supply company first, I could talk for hours about the various business ventures I've helped out with. And even though I don't get back to Western Mass as much as I used to, I still enjoy spending my December weekends selling Christmas trees at the family tree lot that we've had for nearly 50 years!
