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Selected Projects
Seven projects: the problem, the build, and what came out the other end. Tap a title to collapse it.
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Opioid overdoses turn fatal when there’s no one in the room to respond in time.
- Built
- NaloPulse, a wearable, autonomous overdose-response device built with a 4-person team. An SGP30 VOC sensor reads breathing rate from the breath path; when it drops below 7 breaths/min, a servo-triggered spring-loaded actuator fires a standard naloxone nasal spray to the 3–6 cm nasal-mucosa depth and alerts first responders with the user’s location.
- Outcome
- Working detect-to-deliver prototype; aerosol cleared the depth target. A full FMEA reduced every unacceptable risk to ALARP, and a 5-year present-worth analysis backed a government harm-reduction sales model.
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I wanted to see a room the way a sensor does, as a point cloud built one reading at a time.
- Built
- A complete 3D spatial mapping system on a TM4C1294 microcontroller: a VL53L1X time-of-flight sensor over I²C, SysTick interrupt-driven timing, and stepper-motor positional control, streamed to a Python point-cloud visualizer over UART. 64 readings per 360° sweep, stacked into layers along a hallway and stitched in Open3D.
- Outcome
- Renders full room scans from raw range data. Deployed in a McMaster engineering hallway.
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Lung cancer leaves traces in exhaled breath long before symptoms show up.
- Built
- A synthetic biological AND-gate circuit in S. cerevisiae that detects breath biomarkers and triggers GFP expression. Modelled multi-branch transcriptional regulation (olfactory-receptor GPCR signalling, GLD1+ promoter induction, and glucose-responsive false-negative detection) in MATLAB SimBiology.
- Outcome
- AND-gate logic validated across 5 experimental groups; target specificity with a GFP plateau near 400 s and near-zero leaky expression.
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Group music therapy needs instruments that anyone in the room can play, regardless of mobility.
- Built
- Re-engineered the Space Palette Pro’s hardware and software stack around 3D touch-pressure sensors, enabling simultaneous real-time music generation and visual painting. Optimized the signal-processing chain for synchronized audio-visual output.
- Outcome
- Deployed across 5 hospitals and hospices in Ottawa; presented at the Carleton IP Innovation Awards; permanently installed at a children’s hospice for ongoing group music therapy.
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Patients with limited mobility still want to make music, and the instrument has to meet the body where it is.
- Built
- A set of IoT-enabled wearable rehabilitation devices. C++/Arduino firmware with BLE-MIDI translates real-time IMU orientation and velocity into musical expression, paired with a Python GUI for spatial mapping and vector-geometry configuration.
- Outcome
- Presented at multiple accessibility conferences and symposiums, including the Carleton IP Innovation Awards.
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Seizures are most dangerous in the moments when no one is watching.
- Built
- A real-time epilepsy seizure-monitoring system: EMG sensors on a Raspberry Pi, threshold-based detection, and an automated servo-actuated bed rail that deploys on detection. Designed the mechanical rail enclosure in AutoCAD.
- Outcome
- Validation testing tuned detection sensitivity while minimizing false positives.
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Every motion-driven wearable needs to know which way is up, and which face is which.
- Built
- A configurable desktop tool for mapping and analyzing device orientation and vector geometry, calibrating per-face note and axis data, connecting over serial, and saving reusable device profiles for the SymphoSolids platform.
- Outcome
- Cut setup time and made device calibration repeatable across hardware.