About Me

Dear All,

My name is Kevin, and I grew up in the Chapel Hill, NC area. I was born at Johns Hopkins Hospital and have spent most of my life in North Carolina. As a child, I played violin for more than 15 years of my life and grew up with my sister. I also played sports like soccer, skiing, and equestrian. Some of these activities were done for fun and some of them I went to competitions. Once graduating from my high school, East Chapel Hill High School, I went to North Carolina State University (NCSU) in Raleigh.

While attending NCSU, I originally wanted to go into mechanical engineering. I had to matriculate during my first semester there, into an engineering field and ended up getting into the Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) department instead of mechanical engineering. Funny enough back then I didn't even know the difference between ECE and Computer Science. After getting into the ECE department I learned there's a big difference between the two haha. I ended up making great friends at NCSU, some of whom I still have today. There was collaboration at the school and a tremendous amount of helping me out. Many people helped me and I'd like to think I helped a lot of people as well. I got onto the senior design project for autonomous transportation throughout the NCSU campus. The goal of the project was to replace the NCSU bus system with autonomous cars, but our part of the project was creating a system that would allow the vehicle to drive along a set path. We were also tasked with high-level path planning of cars but ended up not getting to that. During the project, we created two demos where we took an idea and implemented it on RC cars to verify that our system worked. Since being a young kid I have always been interested in working with the automotive industry and creating a system of autonomous cars, which would remove the driver and provide a safer environment for all drivers. This was the main topic for my graduate application letters and got me a scholarship to go to Virginia Tech (VT).

After getting into Virginia VT I joined my graduate lab where I stayed for the next five and half years working on Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGVs). While in graduate school I made more friends, learned a lot, and got exposed to a lot more culture. For the first year I kept to myself and focused on finishing the graduate classes. The first year was a lot of acclimation into a new environment and finishing up school work. I soon got into the grove of things at VT and was able to feel at home again. At VT I found my passion in rock climbing. I had a high school friend who was in undergrad at VT show me the ropes figuratively and literally. Climbing became something that helped to keep me grounded and clear my mind. It also allowed me to experience so many new things that I previously never had. Also while at VT I had my research papers accepted to different conferences and symposiums around the world. Because of this I was able to travel the world and present my research to others within the field. It was an amazing experience seeing the world and being able to do it while doing my work. This allowed me to learn more about myself but help round me out in infinite many ways. The most impactful part of my life came during my time at VT where I met my now wife. During graduate school she filled my days with happiness and spontaneity. She always brought a different outlooks to problems and provided comfort in times of hardship. I finished my graduate school with a Masters and Ph.D. degree in robotics. I specialized in high level path planning for unmanned robotic systems.

After graduate school I went to my first job and gain even more insight there. At this point of writing this I find it amazing that every step in my life I was always able to learn so much. Every step in life so much can be gained and learned. It's inevitable we live life, but it astounding how far we have come if we spend the time to self reflect. My first job was no different in learning and gaining friends. This stage of my life, like many previously, provided me with knowledge and friendships that I value to this day. The work place was a small company and provided me with a lot of insight on every aspect of a company from the technicians to the engineers to the finances to the sales to the Chief Executive Officer (CEO).

I ended up moving a year after I entered my first job and moved to another job. This job is at a larger global company and is the current job I hold. Here I got learned a very different way companies could work. I found out the complexities of a larger company being good and bad. I found many interests and learned more about the vocabulary of the industry more and the nuances of navigating a larger workspace.

Well this is the end of my about me and it's a relief to me to have written this. It's nice to give people, who come to my page, a glimpse of who I am and how I got to where I am now. I know this was long and may not be perfect but one thing I do know is that it exemplifies me at my purest. If you have some how stumbled on my website and then come to this page and after both of those, seemingly difficult tasks, end up reading all the way to the end I thank you for coming along on my journey and wish you all the best in your journey as well.

Please reach out if you would like to talk about anything in your life, career or anything other.

~Kevin