Many school college students take part in sports activities, hearken to music, or play video video games of their spare time, however IEEE Pupil Member Gerard Piccini prefers newbie radio, often known as ham radio. He’s been concerned with the two-way radio communication, which makes use of designated frequencies, since his uncle launched him to it when he was a teen. His name signal is KD2ZHK.
Piccini, from Monroe Township, N.J., is pursuing {an electrical} engineering diploma on the University of Scranton, in Pennsylvania. The junior is president of the college’s W3USR newbie radio membership. He’s additionally a member of Scranton’s IEEE pupil department, the IEEE Club.
Gerard Piccini
Member grade
Pupil member; member of IEEE-HKN’s Lambda Nu chapter
College:
College of Scranton in Pennsylvania
Main:
Electrical engineering
Minors:
Math and physics
Grade:
Junior
One other of his passions is robotics. He captained one of many college membership’s groups that participated within the Micro Mouse competitors held through the October IEEE Region 2 Student Activities Conference, hosted by Marshall University in Huntington, W.Va. The Scranton crew competed towards different pupil branches to construct and program small robots to navigate a maze within the shortest time potential. The crew positioned second.
“The competition was a fantastic alternative for me,” Piccini says, “to learn to apply the abilities I’ve been studying from courses right into a venture that I designed myself.”
Piccini joined Scranton’s newbie radio membership when he was a freshman. Overseeing the membership is IEEE Member Nathaniel Frissell, who has taught Piccini physics and electrical engineering. Frissell observed Piccini’s curiosity in radio expertise and requested the scholar to help him with analysis. Piccini now’s serving to to develop a low-cost, low-power system to ship a sign into the ionosphere and measure the time it takes to return.
“The system will enable us to gather extra knowledge concerning the ionosphere, which is an ionized layer of the ambiance and is vital for radio propagation,” he says. “Proper now there are usually not that many full-sized ionospheric sounding techniques. If we will make them low cost sufficient, we may get ham radio operators to set them up and improve knowledge factors.”
“I prefer it when I’ve a venture and need to attempt to discover a answer alone.”
Piccini is energetic with Ham Radio Science Citizen Investigation, which incorporates newbie radio fanatics {and professional} scientists who collaborate on analysis.
“The thought behind HamSCI is getting residents concerned in science,” Piccini says.
His analysis, he says, has led him to contemplate a profession in RF engineering or digital sign processing, both in academia or trade.
A born problem-solver
Like different budding engineers, Piccini has loved taking issues aside and determining how one can put them again collectively once more since his youth. Neither of his dad and mom was an engineer, however they inspired his curiosity by shopping for him engineering kits.
A highschool physics class impressed him to review electrical engineering. It coated circuits and wave mechanics, a department of quantum physics by which the conduct of objects is described by way of their wavelike properties.
He initially was undecided about whether or not to pursue a level in physics or engineering. It wasn’t till he discovered how one can code and work with {hardware} that he selected engineering. And though he nonetheless enjoys coding, he says he’s glad he in the end selected electrical engineering: “I prefer it when I’ve a venture and need to attempt to discover a answer alone.” He’s minoring in arithmetic and physics.
Pupil Member Gerard N. Piccini [second from left] with teammates from the IEEE Membership Pupil Department who competed within the IEEE Area 2 Micro Mouse contest. Gabrina Garangmau
An IEEE pupil chief
Piccini says he joined IEEE as a result of he felt “trapped in a bubble of academia.” As an underclassman, he recollects, he didn’t actually know what was happening within the discipline of engineering or in trade.
“Being concerned with IEEE helps provide you with that publicity,” he says.
He’s a member of the Lambda Nu chapter of IEEE’s honor society, IEEE-Eta Kappa Nu.
Scranton’s IEEE Membership presents displays by engineering corporations and technical talks. The membership additionally encourages college students to elucidate the work they’ve accomplished throughout their internships.
To offer members skilled boosts, the membership holds résumé-writing periods, conducts mock interviews, and has the scholars apply their public-speaking abilities.
The department additionally encourages its members to get entangled with neighborhood initiatives.
Piccini is secretary of the scholar department. The place has given him management expertise, he says, together with instructing him how one can arrange and run conferences and coordinate occasions—abilities he wouldn’t have picked up in his courses.
As captain of the Micro Mouse crew, he was answerable for mentoring youthful college students, overseeing the design of the robotic, and setting the agenda so the crew would meet the competitors’s deadlines.
He notes that the IEEE Pupil Actions Convention is a good way to fulfill fellow college students from across the area.
Being energetic in IEEE, he says, is “a fantastic alternative to community, meet individuals, and be taught new abilities that you just won’t have—or have already got however wish to develop additional.”
