DAVID SANICO — AI-READABLE PORTFOLIO TEXT

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David Sanico's Portfolio
DAVID
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SKILLS
PROJECTS
TIMELINE
CONTACT
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FOCUSED ON EMBEDDED SYSTEMS
EXPLORE SKILLS
Programming
Digital Design
Analog Design
PCB Design
Hardware Test
Other
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PROJECT TEAMS, INTERNSHIPS, & HOBBY PROJECTS
PROJECT CATALOG
Python
Pytest
C++
RF Pulses
Quantum Firmware Internship @ IBM
Mixed-System Qubit Control Emulation
Python
Developing a YAML-configurable multi-emulator harness to validate mixed-gen / mixed-ISA qubit control electronics ahead of hardware rollout.
Waveform Memory Optimization Automated Testing
Python
Multi-Threading
Used python multi-threading to automatically emulate, compare, and report qubit control execution binaries
with various memory optimization strategies to accelerate next-gen quantum firmware development.
Cryogenic-CMOS ASIC ADC Characterization
Pytest
Python
Characterizing cryo-CMOS ASICs' ability to measure payload resistance across varying temperatures and payloads,
enabling development of intrusion-free connectivity testing of dense qubit control research systems.
Room-Temp Electronics Manager Dashboard
AI
Used IBM internal AI tooling to develop a GUI displaying critical information on qubit control electronics'
health, connectivity, and booted images across the entire hardware stack. Included features for GUI-based booting
and synchronous use.
AI/Qiskit/QEC Integration
Qiskit
AI
Integrated Qiskit and QEC analysis to an IBM internal AI tool, enabling the capability to analyze Qiskit quantum circuits
and provide a matrix of recommendations covering QEC strategies and IBM hardware backends based on the quantum circuit analysis.
Project Lead @ MASA
Altium Designer
Bay Board PCBs
Project Lead @ MASA
Altium Designer
08/24 to 05/25
Developed a network of 3 control and data acquisition PCBs as a critical component of the flight avionics architecture on MASA's rocket.
Each board interfaces with external pressure transducers and thermocouples, as well as onboard IMUs and barometers, to acquire data and send
telemetry to the flight computer. Each board also controls valves to enable precise pressure control and sequencing.
I designed over 85% of the schematics and layout.
Alias:
Trident
Number Components:
501
Layers:
6
Comm. Protocols:
Ethernet, I2C, SPI, UART
Digital Subsystems:
STM32, IMUs, Barometers
Analog Subsystems:
Power Regulation, Valve Control, Motor Control, Thermocouple & Pressure Transducer Interfaces
Team Members:
4
Visit MASA
LTspice
Altium Designer
Benchtop Equipment
Electrical Engineering Internship @ Rocket Lab
GPS PCB Design Verification
LTspice
Led design verification for a satellite GPS PCB, shaving 4 weeks off testing by soldering a PCB, analyzing power regulation and
latch behavior via LTspice, and verifying physical assembly using DMMs, oscilloscope, power supplies, and electronic loads.
Test Rig Interface PCB
Altium Designer
Designed, ordered, assembled, and validated an interface board bridging a flight PCB to an automated test rig, enabling integrated and automated testing.
Underwent full product lifecycle including design reviews to meet customer needs, parts sourcing with efficient costs, and in-house assembly and validation.
Discrete LDO Test PCB
Altium Designer
LTspice
Developed and utilized a test PCB to analyze a discrete LDO designed for long-term radiation and thermal cycling, uncovering stability issues and
preventing costly redesign through Bode instrument analysis, thermal analysis, and LTspice simulations.
Pulse-Driver PCB
Altium Designer
Designed a low-side NMOS pulse driver PCB that streamlined board power supply testing and step response analysis.
ADC Firmware
Arduino IDE
Wrote firmware in Arduino to validate an onboard ADC, implementing SPI communication and data readout from flight channels to
aid in board-level bring-up and testing.
Project Lead @ MASA
Altium Designer
Flight Recorder PCB
Project Lead @ MASA
Altium Designer
03/24 to 01/25
Designed and fabricated my first PCB from start to finish.
Includes onboard sensors, onboard memory, Ethernet, SPI, I2C, EEPROM, and an STM32 to record and protect
flight data sent from onboard sensors and a flight computer. Also includes a failure mode to preserve data
during power loss. Banana-shaped to wrap around the engine.
Alias:
Keylime
Number Components:
181
Layers:
6
Comm. Protocols:
Ethernet, I2C, SPI, UART
Digital Subsystems:
STM32, IMUs, Barometers
Team Members:
1
Visit MASA
C
C++
Assembly
Intro to Computer Organization & Intro to Data Structures and Algorithms
Assembler, Linker, and Machine Code Execution Simulator
C
RISC-Based Assembly
Completed a series of projects that assembles individual assembly-language files (RISC-based architecture)
into object files, links the object files to produce a single executable, and simulates the execution of the
machine code.
Pipelined Datapath Simulator
C
RISC-Based Assembly
Produced a program that simulates every cycle of a 5-stage pipelined processor with detect-and-stall, data forwarding, and predict
branch-not-taken strategies. Simulator written in C, test cases written in RISC-based assembly language.
Cache Simulator
C
RISC-Based Assembly
Added cache-access functionality to machine code execution simulator, acting as a write-back, allocate-on-write
cache of tunable associativity. Simulator functions written in C, test cases written in RISC-based assembly language.
Euchre Cardgame Simulator
C++
Built a C++ simulation of the card game Euchre featuring human and bot players, using object-oriented programming with
inheritance and polymorphism to model cards, players, and gameplay logic.
Machine Learning Post Classifier
C++
Implemented a C++ machine learning classifier that automatically labels Piazza posts by topic using a bag-of-words model
and probabilistic learning techniques, gaining experience with containers like sets and maps for natural language processing.
Content-Aware Image Resizer
C++
Created a content-aware image resizing tool using seam-carving to remove low-energy pixel seams, with extensive
testing and debugging of pointers, streams, and abstract data types.
EE System Design I
C
Python
Search-and-Rescue Robot
Electrical Engineering System Design I
C
Python
08/25 to 12/25
Created a self-navigating robot with steering, odometry, battery monitoring, sonar sensors, a thermopile, and a camera.
Produced software to support PID-controlled path following, obstacle avoidance, heat detection, and computer vision with
color-based object detection to simulate search-and-rescue of humans. Hardware includes BeagleBone Blue and an Arduino.
Team Member @ MDST
Python
Machine Learning Based Stock Analysis
Team Member @ MDST
Python
01/24 to 05/24
Created an LSTM model designed to predict NVIDIA's stock price trend
for the next day, with performance in RMSE and MAPE precision benchmarks over 10x greater than the MDST team's base model.
Libraries:
Numpy
Pandas
TensorFlow
Keras
Visit MDST
View Streamlit
Personal Project (High School)
Electric Nerf Blaster Modification
Personal Project (High School)
11/19 to 01/22
Converted a semi-automatic pistol into a fully-automatic rifle with increased power,
dual-ammo compatibility, tracer-ammo UV charging, and an integrated voltmeter. This was a fun high school project
that introduced me to the world of electrical engineering.
Python
Arduino
Miscellaneous Projects
Automated Plant Keeper with Computer Vision A.I.
Personal Project
Python
Arduino
07/24 to 08/24
Created a system to automatically provide water and light to a plant with machine-learning image recognition to adjust moisture
and light-hour thresholds. Used an ESP32 with firmware in Arduino to measure soil moisture and light, control a water pump, and
take pictures with a camera and send to a Flask server hosted by my laptop. Created a Flask server to send the image to a Colab script
that uses a YOLO model to detect leaves, then a convolutional neural network for each leaf to determine if the plant required more
frequent watering and light.
Optics Research for Quantum Key Distribution
Principles of Optics
03/25 to 04/25
Explored the principles of Quantum Key Distribution and the physics of light and photonic
qubits traversing the atmosphere from satellites to ground stations. Researched various approaches for encoding quantum information into photons, multiplexing
for optical communication, and adaptive optics for satellite-to-ground transmission. Proposed combined time- and polarization-division
multiplexing with time-bin quantum encoding to minimize atmospheric effects.
Quantum Circuit Simulator (QuaCS)
Personal Project
Typescript
03/25 to current
Creating a simulator for basic 6-qubit quantum circuits with an interactive circuit-building tool, results for probability and randomized measurements,
and support for entangled quantum states. Using Typescript for the back-end and React.js for the front-end. I'm working on this with a friend,
and support for front-end features and entanglement is in progress!
APOAPSIS
PERIAPSIS
REFERENCE PLANE / ECI
FROM LOW EARTH ORBIT TO SUPERCONDUCTING QUBITS
TRAJECTORY
01
EVENT NODE / 01
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ORIGIN
CURRENT
TIMELINE
Quantum Firmware Intern @ IBM
| Jun. 2026 - Aug. 2026
Developing firmware for the Quantum Instrument Control systems at IBM in Rochester, MN.
Study Abroad @ UC3M
| Jan. 2026 - May 2026
Studied abroad at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid and explored life and culture in Europe!
Avionics Hardware Lead @ MASA
| Apr. 2025 - Dec. 2025
I helped manage the development of all hardware projects in MASA. I oversaw timelines and goals of multiple projects simultaneously,
wrote and maintained new documentation to improve team-wide standards, conducted technical design reviews, and provided guidance to
new team members.
I also contributed to a novel Hardware-in-the-Loop system that emulates analog sensors, digital sensors, and loads by helping to
architect the system-wide design and drafting initial board-level designs for multiple PCBs.
Electrical Engineering Intern @ Rocket Lab
| May 2025 - Aug. 2025
As a member of the Space Systems Avionics Team, I carried out the design verification process of a satellite PCB including
assembly, physical testing, and SPICE analysis. I also designed three new PCBs for testing integration, which included
leading a professional PCB lifecycle from requirements capture to validation as well as assembling the PCBs. Additionally, I wrote
firmware to assist in the bring-up of a flight PCB by validating an ADC.
Bay Board PCBs Project Lead @ MASA
| Aug. 2024 - May 2025
I led a team of 4 to develop a 501-component PCB to control valves and receive sensor data in our rocket.
I designed over 85% of schematics and layout, managed task distribution and deadlines, optimized multi-vendor BOMs,
and coordinated with structures and plumbing subteams for cross-team collaboration.
Hackathon @ Tau Epsilon Kappa
| Apr. 2025
I created the beginnings of a Quantum Circuit Simulator (QuaCS) project (still in the works) at a hackathon
as a member of Tau Epsilon Kappa.
Flight Recorder PCB Project Lead @ MASA
| Mar. 2024 - Jan. 2025
I was the designated Responsible Engineer for the flight recorder PCB for MASA.
It was my first time designing and assembling a PCB!
Data Science Intern @ Pair Tech
| May 2024 - Aug. 2024
I developed and tested three multi-stage Azure pipelines and five Python scripts to automate the
scraping and ingestion of license data. I containerized scripts using Docker and Kubernetes for
efficient deployment, and processed over 100 million datapoints from multiple state databases into Cosmos DB.
CONTACT / QUANTUM STATE 01
REACH OUT
CONTACT 01
EMAIL
dsanico@umich.edu
CONTACT 02
LINKEDIN
CONTACT 03
GITHUB
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HERO TYPEWRITER TEXT (FROM script.js)

I am a U-M engineer.
I am a designer and creator.
I am always eager to learn.
I am a breakfast lover.

INTERACTIVE TERMINAL CONTENT (FROM terminal.js)

I'm a rising senior at the University of Michigan majoring in Electrical Engineering. My focus is embedded systems, with hands-on experience in PCB design, hardware verification, and firmware development. I'm especially drawn to the intersection of embedded systems and quantum technology, and I have specialized experience in qubit control electronics and space-grade hardware.

bio.txt

I'm a rising senior at the University of Michigan majoring in Electrical Engineering. My focus is embedded systems, with hands-on experience in PCB design, hardware verification, and firmware development. I'm especially drawn to the intersection of embedded systems and quantum technology, and I have specialized experience in qubit control electronics and space-grade hardware.

education.txt

University of Michigan
graduation date: May 2027
major: Electrical Engineering
GPA: 3.67/4 (Magna Cum Laude)
honors and awards: Dean's List, James B. Angell Scholar, Ernest W. Reynolds Endowment
Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (study abroad)
term: Spring 2026
churros eaten: 112

experience.txt

IBM        | Quantum Firmware Intern       | Jun. 2026 - Aug. 2026
MASA       | Avionics Hardware Lead        | Apr. 2025 - Dec. 2025
Rocket Lab | Electrical Engineering Intern | May 2025 - Aug. 2025
Pair Tech  | Data Science Intern           | May 2024 - Aug. 2024

(view the projects and timeline section of this website for more details)

skills.txt

Hardware            | Firmware/Software
---------------------------------------
Altium              | Python
LTspice             | C++
VHDL                | C
Oscilloscope        | Assembly
VNA                 | Qiskit
DMM                 | Linux
Power Supplies      | Arduino
Low-Voltage Design  | MATLAB
Mixed-System Design | Git
Hardware Assembly   | Pytest
Systems Integration | Docker

(view the skills section of this website for more details)

courses.txt

Intro to Computer Organization
Digital Logic
Circuit Analysis
Signals and Systems
Electromagnetics
Principles of Optics
Electrical Engineering System Design
Intro to Data Structures and Algorithms
Intro to Quantum Information Technology
Intro to Quantum Nanotechnology (Fall 2026)
Microwave Circuits I (capstone) (Fall 2026)

hobbies.txt

Travelling
Weightlifting
Running and hiking
Reading
Coding for fun
Breakfast

SKILLS PANEL CONTENT (FROM skills-pcb.js)

BOARD DEVELOPMENT
Hardware Design
I've taken hardware from requirements and architecture through schematic capture, layout, and assembly.
Altium
PCB schematics
PCB layout
Component selection

VERIFICATION / VALIDATION
Hardware Test
I've used instrumentation and repeatable test methods to prove that hardware meets its requirements.
Oscilloscope
DMM
VNA
Bode plot analyzer
MATLAB
Pytest

DIGITAL SYSTEMS
Digital Design
I've designed logic and interfaces that move data between devices and board-level subsystems.
MCUs
SPI
I2C
Ethernet
Shift registers
Digital Sensors
VHDL
Digital logic

ANALOG SYSTEMS
Analog Design
I've analyzed, simulated, and conditioned real-world signals in mixed-signal systems.
Circuit analysis
LTspice
Signal conditioning
Filtering
Analog sensors
Mixed-signal design

SOFTWARE / FIRMWARE
Programming
I've developed software and low-level firmware that controls, validates, and supports embedded hardware.
C
C++
Python
Assembly
Embedded firmware
Pytest
Qiskit

TOOLS / INTEGRATION
Other Skills
I've supported engineering work with practical development, collaboration, and system-integration tools.
Linux
Git
Docker
Azure
Systems integration
Hardware assembly