Brian Kelley's Professional Statement
As I started college I decided to pursue a degree in Computer Engineering. I had a software-centric resume at the time, so I was choosing between Computer Science and Computer Engineering. As a web developer, I was biased towards computer science because that was what I knew. However, before deciding, I researched computer engineering and decided that it sounded a lot more interesting than the alternatives. A year later I was taking my first real Computer Engineering course: “Introduction to Digital System Design.” After breezing by the simple logic circuits, we started to get into sequential circuits, ALUs, and even a simple computer. Ever since I have learned how to add two numbers in hardware, I’ve been fascinated and hooked on digital design. I have found my true passion.
Throughout my time as a Computer Engineer I have been acquiring skills and experience that will be very valuable in a computer engineering job. I have accumulated copious amounts of experience in both a professional as well as collegiate setting.
In my classes I have participated in and lead many digital logic design projects. My first was in a class titled “ASIC Design Laboratory.” For the last month of the class, we formed a team of three people and designed a digital oscilloscope that had a graphical output. I was responsible for the signal processing block of the project which analyzed the signals to find certain characteristics such as minimum and maximum values, periods, and more. I have also taken a class on Computer Architecture and it was by far my favorite class so far. I find it extremely interesting and useful. I learned more advanced digital design techniques such as caching and pipelining. The goal of the semester project was to design a dual-core processor with a cache. My partner and I succeeded in doing this project to all specifications and personal project goals. In addition, after finals I stayed on campus and extended the processor to have memory-mapped I/O. This allowed me to shoot a video of the processor in action to show my family, friends, and corporate recruiters.
After taking Computer Architecture, most Purdue computer engineers are finished with their digital logic design curriculum, but I wanted to continue learning about the thing I love. In conjunction with two Purdue professors and in partnership with ARM, five undergrads and I are designing a system on a chip with an integrated graphics controller that will be fabricated and then tested by the team. I am serving as the lead chip architect and will also do a large portion of the design of the chip. As the team leader and most experienced member, I will also be responsible for looking over others’ progress and making sure that things stay on track.
In addition to my in-class experience, I have substantial experience outside of the classroom as well. I have been an active member of the Purdue Solar Racing team since my freshman year in college. Throughout my years on the team I have been fortifying my classroom learning with realistic experience in circuit design, layout, and microcontroller programming. I also was the electrical director for a semester which allowed me to gain leadership skills. I was in charge of overseeing progress on electrical projects, collaborating with other engineering disciplines, and member retention. As a multi-disciplinary team of engineers, the solar team has given me the skills I need to work in a real engineering firm.
I have also had two engineering-related co-ops/internships. My first was a co-op position at Thompson/Technicolor, a consumer electronics maker. I was in the research and development division that designed IP-enabled DirecTV systems targeted at multi-tenant buildings. I was put in charge of writing software to ease product development and deployment. This is where I first gained professional experience with C, Perl, Java, and Linux. I also had an internship at National Instruments where I worked as a driver writer for a digital arbitrary waveform generator/analyzer. I also gained experience in automated testing of software code.
As well as the things I have covered so far, I also have detailed experience using Mentor Graphics ModelSim, MIPS/Freescale Assembly, C++, Java, C#, Python, ANTLR, OrCAD Capture/Layout, Version Control Systems, and Microsoft Office. I look forward to working with other engineers to design, test, and release a product that will be valuable to those that use it and I feel the my experiences so far have given me the knowledge that I need to do so.
