# A Bit About Bryson
# TL;DR / Abstract / A Brief Intro to Me Now
As you can see on the homepage, I’m a PhD student in Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECEn). I’m attending Brigham Young University (BYU), where I got my BS degree in Computer Engineering. My current research lies in the field of networking devices, both wired and wireless. You can see more about what our lab at BYU is doing here.
During my undergrad years, I took classes that trained me in embedded systems and FPGA usage, learning about digital logic all along the way. My current skill-set includes C/C++, Python, Verilog/SystemVerilog, some java, and recently I’ve been dabbling in Python.
My most recent work has involved automating testing software that evaluates V2X equipment. You can read more about it here. I got to present on this at IEEE’s 2023 Vehicular Networking Conference. Currently I’m expanding that testing framework to evaluate additional elements of V2I equipment.
# Beginnings
I grew up near Seattle, Washington. I’ve always loved the Pacific Northwest, and I couldn’t be prouder of where I come from. While the school year was usually busy with class, clubs, and the occasional sport, my family loved to spend our summers having fun in Washington’s beautiful outdoors. I’m a huge fan of canoeing, kayaking, crabbing, camping, and so on. I was an active member of my Boy Scouts of America troop and even earned the rank of Eagle Scout at age 15, later on earning the Silver Palm before leaving high school.
Growing up, I had a lot of opportunities to use computers for school and personal activities. (I loved making slideshows especially, after learning about those in early elementary school!) Later on, I started to understand more about the inner workings of computers, and I jumped at chances to learn more through programs like MIT’s Scratch and classes about computer technology and programming. While plenty of topics in school fascinated me, I was excited to see how computer science came almost naturally. In my junior year I took AP computer Science and was part of a team that competed in (though, more like attended 🙃) a Hunt the Wumpus competition at Microsoft headquarters in Redmond.
While still in middle school, I learned about computer engineering from a scoutmaster who had gotten his PhD in ECEn at BYU as well. At the time, he was working at Microsoft, and as pat of a scouting merit badge requirement, I got to shadow him at work. That just about sealed the deal for me. I had figured by that point that I wanted to do something with computers, and I liked the balance that I would get to strike between software and hardware as a computer engineer.
By the time I left home for BYU, I already had my major declared, and I couldn’t wait to start a whole new journey.
# Undergrad Years
I attended BYU as an undergrad from 2016-2022 (with a two-year break for a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 2017-2019). During this time, I took classes that covered a wide variety of computer topics: from embedded systems, electrical circuits, FPGAs and digital logic, to commons CS classes like data structures and app development. One fun example is building a simple RISC-V processor on an FPGA and using it to run an Atari-style game written in assembly. My last year of undergrad was spent working on a Capstone project, creating a basis for a CubeSat project.
# Exploration Engineering
While working on these class assignments, two of my classmates and I started to sprinkle in side projects together. We worked on a quad copter, a robotics competition, and an automated fan. These helped me to apply my developing engineering skills in new and exciting ways, as well as forming some amazing friendships.
# Spacecraft Club
During my last few years as an undergrad, I was part of the BYU Spacecraft Club, even becoming the Vice President over Intermediate Projects. Here I helped work on miniature satellites that the club aimed to get into space while also providing management for our intermediate club projects - at the time, this included creating a live replica of the International Space Station and developing our own satellite base station using the open source SatNOGS platform.
# Looking Ahead
My senior year at BYU, I was ready to move on to graduate school, but I wasn’t yet sure about where to go or which program. It was a stroke of luck that I wound up taking a computer networking class taught by Dr. Philip Lundrigan. He expressed in his class openings for graduate students, and the more that I took the class the more that I got excited at the idea of working with him. Before the end of the year, the deal was sealed and I would start my PhD with him as my advisor that next fall.
I graduated with my bachelors in Computer Engineering in April of 2022. Go Cougs!
# Grad School
The summer between graduation and grad school, I was approached by the advisor of the Spacecraft Club and was asked to lead a workshop where university students would come from Chiapas, Mexico to learn the basic principles for designing their own CubeSat device. The workshop ran for three weeks, and it was a massive success and joy to get to work with this group!
Since then I have been taking more classes about digital systems, as well as classes revolving around the mathematics and techniques of agents, systems, high-performance computing, and statistics.
# IEEE VNC 2023
The highlight of my first year of grad school (aside from getting married!) was going to Turkey to present on our lab’s work in the field of Vehicle Networking (V2X, if you’re familiar with it). I presented a poster at IEEE’s 2023 Vehicular Networking Conference. This was a great success for the lab and a great opportunity to travel the world!
