Digital Craftsman (Developer/Undergraduate Researcher)
I'm an Information Systems (IS) & Computer Science (CS) enthusiast and developer specializing on machine learning, AI, and cybersecurity. All coding projects are mostly research-related or passion-driven projects designed from the ground up, with the ultimate goal of solving real-life problems with software. All video content demonstrate some of my current projects such as the KetanBot Robotic Bartender and a demonstrations of our 2x World Championship Qualifing FRC Robot, curated and edited by myself. I publish more information and content on my personal portfolio "lisul.org."
I started coding in 6th grade, with the onset of scratch.mit.edu with a passion to learn everything I could about sofware engineering – in block-coding, that is. The passion transitioned into remixing several advanced games, customizing them, and publishing them under my username – which I did garner a hefty community for. This then transitioned into leading the middle school's Coding Club under the supervision of Mrs. Lisa Capulong. I was the president, and would invite guest speakers from Hatch (a similar program to Scratch) to share their collegiate-level experiences in programming as well as presenting my own slideshows in front of the club. However, I had always desired more than simple block coding. Fast forward a year in managing the Coding Club, I began to teach the more advanced topic of the Python processing language with a friend of mine. We self-learned the topic through w3schools and transferred our knowledge to slides, presenting them in front of the entire audience. This was when I started to love programming as not a medium for games, but more of the ink for actually useful applications. I would continue to create simple applications in Python, such as a number randomizer, Tic-tac-toe simple AIs, etc. Then came high school, where I would fall in love with the world of robotics. I partook in the FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) team of Syosset High School, where I mostly worked on the hardware and business aspects of team. My dad then recommended me to learn Java, which I promptly did over a night, and that's when I joined the software side of robotics. I transitioned into joining the FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) team 9016 (Syosset Supersonics), which was a large step up from FTC, but a new opportunity since we were a rookie team starting up that year. I led the programming efforts in creating a swerve drive and arcade drive robot, where the knowledge I gained from working with the hardware in FTC helped me see programming/IoT connections between FRC parts. I would also be responsible for leading our efforts in creating the Limelight camera vision system for our robot, as well as intake & outtake operations. This was in the junior year of my high school, and we would meet for several hours each and every day to work on this robot. After several days of tiresome work, we ended up creating a stellar robot that won the Rookie All Star award as well as a wildcard to go to the FIRST Robotics Competition World Championship in Houston, Texas. I was ecstatic, even though we didn't place too well in the championships. Come next year, I would triple the efficiency of all our drivetrain systems, as well as upgrade our camera vision system into a fully-functional robot visualization system similar to Tesla's. It could approximate the position of the robot based on the positions of certain markers (known as April Tags) on the pre-determined field. This was revolutionary for our robot, and we would use this implementation to add auto-aiming for our robot as well as auto-alignment, which were extremely important for that year's event. We ended up sweeping the competition with a 1st place finish during our Regional, as Team captains of the winning alliance, securing us another spot in the FIRST Robotics Championships at Houston, Texas. This was a big turning point in establishing my deep interest in robotics and neural networking / machine learning, which I had to make from scratch for the camera vision system as well as the robot localization. I also dabbled into web development through the Coding and Web Development Club which I was so fortunate to be the president of. This culminated into me making lisul.org, my personal portfolio based on the language React.js and HTML+CS. All of these acquired projects under my belt were sometimes challenging to learn/understand, however, they twisted my brain in ways I loved, which is why I continue to love Information Systems as well as Computer Science throughout college.
