Ham Radio Impressed This Scranton College Pupil to Pursue Engineering

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 beginner 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 College of Scranton, in Pennsylvania. The junior is president of the college’s W3USR beginner radio membership. He’s additionally a member of Scranton’s IEEE pupil department, the IEEE Membership.

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 Area 2 Pupil Actions Convention, hosted by Marshall College in Huntington, W.Va. The Scranton workforce competed in opposition to different pupil branches to construct and program small robots to navigate a maze within the shortest time doable. The workforce positioned second.

“The competition was an awesome alternative for me,” Piccini says, “to learn to apply the talents I’ve been studying from lessons right into a mission that I designed myself.”

Piccini joined Scranton’s beginner radio membership when he was a freshman. Overseeing the membership is IEEE Member Nathaniel Frissell, who has taught Piccini physics and electrical engineering. Frissell seen Piccini’s curiosity in radio expertise and requested the scholar to help him with analysis. Piccini now could be 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 information concerning the ionosphere, which is an ionized layer of the ambiance and is essential for radio propagation,” he says. “Proper now there aren’t that many full-sized ionospheric sounding programs. If we are able to make them low cost sufficient, we might get ham radio operators to set them up and enhance information factors.”

“I prefer it when I’ve a mission and must attempt to discover a resolution alone.”

Piccini is lively with Ham Radio Science Citizen Investigation, which incorporates beginner radio fanatics {and professional} scientists who collaborate on analysis.

“The concept behind HamSCI is getting residents concerned in science,” Piccini says.

His analysis, he says, has led him to think about a profession in RF engineering or digital sign processing, both in academia or business.

A born problem-solver

Like different budding engineers, Piccini has loved taking issues aside and determining find out how to 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 check electrical engineering. It lined circuits and wave mechanics, a department of quantum physics wherein the habits of objects is described when it comes to 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 find out how to 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 mission and must attempt to discover a resolution 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 subject of engineering or in business.

“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 gives shows by engineering firms and technical talks. The membership additionally encourages college students to elucidate the work they’ve performed throughout their internships.

To provide members skilled boosts, the membership holds résumé-writing classes, conducts mock interviews, and has the scholars apply their public-speaking abilities.

The department additionally encourages its members to get entangled with neighborhood tasks.

Piccini is secretary of the scholar department. The place has given him management expertise, he says, together with educating him find out how to arrange and run conferences and coordinate occasions—abilities he wouldn’t have picked up in his lessons.

As captain of the Micro Mouse workforce, he was liable for mentoring youthful college students, overseeing the design of the robotic, and setting the agenda so the workforce 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 lively in IEEE, he says, is “an awesome alternative to community, meet individuals, and study new abilities that you simply may not have—or have already got however wish to develop additional.”