Projects

Fun little side projects I have done over the years.

Toomre Model for Galaxy Collisions

Physics Finite Difference Approximation MATLAB

The Toomre model is a simplified model to describe the dynamics of galaxy interactions. There are two major assumptions that facilitate the model complexity. First, each galaxy consists of a central point particle called a ”core” which consists of gravitating mass. Second, stars that orbit a galaxy only experience gravitational influence from cores and not from other stars. These two components make it possible to implement an effective and efficient simulation for galaxy interactions/collisions. I used a second-order centered FDA to approximate the differential equation describing N gravitating masses.

COVID-19 Classification from Chest X-Rays

Computer Vision Transfer learning PyTorch

The COVID-19 classification project exposed our team to the challenges of training a model with a small (70 labeled images), imbalanced dataset. The leave-one-out cross validation technique along with data augmentations proved to be highly effective for this task. We were able to leverage what we learned throughout the machine learning course as well as our own prior experience with neural networks to develop a robust classifier. Our model predictions on the test set achieved second place in the class competition.

Arduino Wall Plotter

Robotics Java C

My roommate and I put together an aduino wall plotter project we found on hackster.io. This project gave us great experience with 3D printing, soldering, and various hardware components such as stepper motors, shields, and servos.

Obstacle Avoidance via Ultrasonic Sensor

Robotics MSP430 microcontroller C

I developed and tested an emergency braking system using an ultrasonic sensor, a Texas Instrument MSP430 16-bit micro-controller, and a robot car chassis kit. The challenge in this project was programming the robot without any external libraries like the ones available for Arduino. I also implemented a simple algorithm to maneuver the robot around obstacles using data from 360-degree scans.