KARTHEEKMUKKAVILLI
Education
University of Texas at Austin
Expected May 2028B.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering · GPA 3.95 / 4.0· Austin, TX
- Coursework: Embedded Systems · Digital Logic Design · Digital Signal Processing · Signals & Systems · Computer Architecture · Operating Systems · Software Design · Algorithms · Circuit Theory · Discrete Mathematics · Linear Algebra · Differential Equations.
- Elements of Computing Certificate (CS) · Business Foundations Minor.
Technical Skills
Languages
CC++PythonAssembly
Embedded / RTOS
Zephyr RTOSFreeRTOSnRF Connect SDKLTE-MGNSSLoRaMQTTUARTRTTI²CSPIPWMESP-NOWTLS/mTLS
FPGA / Hardware
Xilinx VivadoVerilognRF9160ESP32Raspberry PiArduinoMPU-6050KiCadFusion 360Saleae LogicnrfjprogAWS IoT Core
DevOps / Tools
DockerGitLab CI/CDGitLinux
Experience
Southwest Research Institute
May 2026 – PresentStudent Engineer, Tactical Aerospace Department (Division 16)· San Antonio, TX
- Developing FPGA firmware and a bootloader for the F-16 SIU (Sensor Integration Unit) in Xilinx Vivado within an ITAR-controlled environment, consolidating divergent legacy codebases into a single validated monorepo with clean version-control history.
- Validated clean-clone build portability across multiple development machines, eliminating environment-specific toolchain drift ahead of full containerization.
- Building a Dockerized build environment and GitLab CI/CD pipelines to automate synthesis, implementation, and bitstream validation, reducing manual build overhead for the firmware team.
Human Centered Robotics Laboratory
Jan 2026 – PresentResearch Assistant, University of Texas at Austin· Austin, TX
- Architected C++ firmware on Raspberry Pi Pico to synchronize 16-DOF bionic hand kinematics from remote glove telemetry, achieving 1ms sensor-to-actuation latency.
- Tuned PID control loops for 10 independent joints, improving tracking from unreliable to consistently stable real-time replication across the full range of hand motion.
- Debugged the sensor-to-actuation pipeline end-to-end using onboard logging to isolate and reduce latency bottlenecks.
National Oilwell Varco
Jun 2025 – Aug 2025Embedded Systems Intern· Houston, TX
- Replaced $20K/site legacy PLC/Modbus installations with a custom nRF9160 board under $250 (98% cost reduction), deployed across 50 field units within a $5K R&D budget.
- Engineered C/Zephyr RTOS firmware for LTE-M + GNSS over a 40-node LoRa mesh to AWS IoT Core; wrote a safe-shutdown handshake preventing LTE tower rejection on power cycle.
- Automated TLS certificate provisioning via Python + AT%CMNG, reducing per-unit onboarding from hours to under one minute across all deployed units.
- Led full product lifecycle — KiCad PCB layout, Fusion 360 enclosure, firmware dev, and field validation — delivering production-ready hardware under budget.
Projects
LiteWing Drone
C++ · ESP32 · FreeRTOS
- Wrote a C++ flight controller on ESP32 running a 1.0ms PID attitude loop, measured at 45µs of jitter using GPIO toggling captured on a Saleae logic analyzer.
- Implemented I²C sensor fusion pipeline reading MPU-6050 IMU, driving four motors via 400Hz PWM — stable hover within ±2.5° over 60-second tests.
- Built a custom ESP-NOW telemetry layer for low-overhead controller-to-drone communication.
- C++FreeRTOSESP32MPU-6050GitHub →
nrf9160-zephyr-template
C · Zephyr RTOS · nRF9160
- Open-sourced production Zephyr firmware generalized from NOV field deployment — LTE-M bring-up with exponential backoff, GNSS PVT parsing, AWS IoT Core MQTT over mTLS.
- Automated TLS certificate provisioning via AT%CMNG, cutting per-unit onboarding from hours to under one minute across 50+ deployed units.
- CZephyr RTOSnRF9160LTE-MAWS IoTGitHub →
pid-motor-sim
Python · Control Systems
- 3-DOF DC motor arm simulation with anti-windup PID, derivative-on-measurement, and Ziegler-Nichols auto-tuning across 80 gain configurations.
- Outputs rise time, settling time, and overshoot metrics per configuration. Public analog of HCRL motor API and LiteWing flight controller work.
- PythonGitHub →
kinematic-transformer
Python · PyTorch
- Transformer encoder for real-time multi-joint kinematic forecasting; 0.571ms inference latency — demonstrates ML-to-actuation pipeline design for embedded control systems.
- Public analog of the ML pipeline powering HCRL bionic-hand teleoperation. Synthetic telemetry dataset, fully reproducible.
- PythonPyTorchGitHub →
Leadership and Awards
- UT IEEE Robotics and Automation Society — engineering autonomous systems.
- TSA Co-Founder — coached 20+ members to Nationals 3× in App Development and Drone Design.
- 4× Gold PVSA Medalist · SAMPADA Violin Certified · ABRSM Violin Grade 5.