About Me

I come from a family of Italian immigrants from the southern-Italian region of Sicily.

In the mid-1960's, my family decided to uproot their lives and move to Canada in search of opportunity. That landed them in Hamilton, ON: a bustling steel producing city that was among the top in North America at its craft. And when my father grew up, that's exactly where he worked as an electrician for over forty years! During his career, he ensured that the complex operations of the plant were maintained. My mother, on the other hand, opted for a different role, also in one of Hamilton's largest sectors: healthcare. She has worked in the field for over forty years as well, taking care of our community's most vulnerable.

That's where I come in.

Since I can remember, I've always been naturally curious. Asking 'Why?' and 'How?' became a habit that's stuck with me my entire life. I loved building things and understanding how they worked, often with blocks and Lego, but also just by opening up old toys. Now, obviously, I didn't understand what was going on inside these toys whatsoever- but I was certainly intrigued! Again, this is another trait that has stayed with me all throughout my education, into my fourth year of the Computer Engineering & Management program at my local McMaster University.

Now, you might be wondering what the 'Engineering & Management' program is, and here's a brief summary:

Take your average four year Engineering degree, and add to that all of the core courses required for a Commerce degree. That means classes like:

• Managerial Finance
• Managerial Accounting
• Human Resource Management
• Marketing Management
• Operations Management
• Strategic Management

And then add to that, classes that blend the technical with business:

• Innovation Driven Project Development and Management
• Engineering & Management Capstone Project

What this provides is an education that's a tier above your basic 4-year degree. By learning all the fundamentals of business, I've become an economically-conscious and business-savvy engineer that understands that any solution needs to make financial sense in order to be explored technically. Basically, just because we can do something, doesn't necessarily mean we should. We should first look to valuate our projects, understand our target markets and understand our break-even points. Along with that, I've learned to manage complex projects in teams. This school term in specific, four of my five classes involve team projects, and using my project management skills, I've been able to organize, delegate, and empower others to accomplish an exceptional standard of work.

Now, let me talk about why I absolutely love computer engineering.

It's no secret that computers are all around us. You're using one right now to read this. Our phones and laptops are essential to daily life, but there's a world of computers hidden under our noses all throughout the world. In certainly unconventional places, we see computers:

• Cars
• Planes
• Satellites
• Ovens
• Televisions
• Game Consoles
• Remotes
• Lights
• Shoes
• And the list goes on and on!

Suffice to say, human life in 2020 revolves around computers.

Getting a computer to run under the most stringent of conditions is a challenge that excites me. One example of this being computers in the outer world of space.

Right now, I'm a Senior Embedded Systems Specialist on the McMaster Interdisciplinary Satellite Team, as part of the NEUDOSE Mission which is funded by the Canadian Space Agency's CubeSat Project. We're creating a satellite to gather scientific data that will assess the radiation exposure present in our atmosphere to ensure that future human missions to Mars are safe.

I'm part of the team who's responsible for the brains of the satellite: the on-board flight computer, which is responsible for orchestrating the operations and communications of the entire device.

From this, I've been able to get hands-on experience with industry-level computer engineering work.

Everything from using oscilloscopes and logic analyzers to test the hardware of the device, for critical aspects like the CPU utilization. I developed a toolkit that allows us to do exactly that: by flashing the firmware to our development board, I built a test bench that is easily configurable and gives an instant reading of the intensity of our firmware on the processor. This is super important because of the unforgiving nature of space, where a single shot of radiation can cause a spike in activity and crash the device altogether. By ensuring our firmware stays within a healthy bound of utilization, we have a big help towards ensuring our mission is a success!

Work like this is why I wanted to become a computer engineer in the first place: to solve important problems that make a difference in the lives of all humans.

Outside from my professional and academic life, I have several interests that I'm also very passionate about.

Firstly: hockey. I started playing when I was eight years old and have been hooked ever since. I'm a hockey nerd at heart, and a huge fan of my hometown Toronto Maple Leafs. I love digging into the nitty-gritty of the game and all that surrounds it, and it holds a very important place in my life. One of my lifelong dreams is to be able to see my team break their 50+ year curse and finally lift the Stanley Cup once again.

I'm also very into music. Digging into the science and art of music, and understanding how music can evoke emotion is one of the greatest mysteries that I'm passionate about. I love discovering new genres, new artists and new music. Making playlists to fit every mood, I'm always listening to something.

The last interest I'll talk about is that I love building hobby electronics! In the past, I've built collision-avoiding robotic cars, a robotic radar system, a smart plant watering system, and I adapted my old-school lights into smart lights that I activate from my phone or with my voice on a daily basis. I continue to build greater and more sophisticated projects, and I'm always looking for my next great one!

Thank you for reading. I hope you enjoyed learning a little more about me, and that you can tell just how passionate I am about this field.