Mohammad Riahi
about
I am an alumnus of the Biomedical Engineering department at NC State University, having completed my undergraduate studies in May 2022. Currently, I am a third-year PhD student in Electrical and Computer Engineering, serving as a Research Assistant and lab manager in Dr. Vazquez-guardado’s lab.
I specialize in developing low-power electronics systems, and my research revolves around leveraging these technologies to engineer closed-loop systems for biomedical applications.
Specifically, my focus includes areas such as allergy intervention and drug overdose intervention.
Through these endeavors, I aim to contribute to advancing technology in the healthcare domain. The devices I work on incorporate wireless communication technologies such as Bluetooth and NFC.
I have hands-on experience with a variety of processors, including ARM and AVR microcontrollers, such asARM Cortex-A53, ARM Cortex-A50+, and CC2640, among others. This diverse set of processors enables me to address different aspects of my projects and contributes to the versatility of the systems I develop.
Biomedical Engineer alumnus from NC State University with hands-on experience developing various low-power biomedical electronics projects from the ground up. My strengths span from various microcontroller programming, (with NFC and Bluetooth functionality), circuit design, PCB design, device optimization, and 3D design.
North Carolina State University (Raleigh, NC)
PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering (Expected Graduation: May 2027)
● Cumulative GPA: 4.0
B.S.c in Biomedical Engineering (May 2022)
● Cumulative GPA: 3.88/4
Research Assistant in Guardado’s lab (Spring 2022 – Present)
NC State University, Raleigh, NC
● Developed, assembled, and programmed eight implantable PCBs utilizing NFC technology to deliver optical pulses to voles and rats for a social behavioral study, in collaboration with Northwestern University.
● Engineered, fabricated, and coded a custom Bluetooth Low Energy PCB using the nRF52844 microcontroller for an electrochemistry application performing square wave voltammetry.
● Designed, built, and implemented a custom Bluetooth Low Energy PCB around the CC2640 microcontroller for detecting heart failure biomarkers in awake animals, in collaboration with Northwestern University.
● Trained and mentored over five undergraduate and one master’s student on similar projects as above for their poster presentations.
Teaching Assistant in BME 207 – Biomedical Electronics (January 2021 – May 2021)
NC State University, Raleigh, NC
Hosted over 40 hours of weekly lab meetings for two lab sections.
● Worked with 20 students on their weekly lab projects and helped with different concepts of electronics from basics to signal processing.
● Taught students how to understand circuits using simulations and basic electronics knowledge.
● Facilitated electronics learning by showing students over 10 examples of how the concepts they learned are applied in real research and projects.
● Graded more than 200 assignments and lab reports throughout the semester.
Undergraduate Research (Spring 2022)
● Developing wireless, battery-free, NFC-enabled electronics for wound monitoring (Funded)
Infant Vital Sign Monitoring, SmartSwaddle (Senior Design)
Designed, fabricated, and tested a double-sided PCB for an infant vital signs monitor that records heart rate, blood oxygen saturation, body temperature, respiratory rate, lung sounds, and body orientation in bed for SIDS prevention. Created an efficient algorithm for encoding and decoding data in Bluetooth communication. Lastly, I programmed an interactive MATLAB GUI to display the interpretation of the sensor data.
Topic in Advanced Computer Design – ECE 785
Optimized color-matching algorithm on a Raspberry Pi 4, improving object detection speed by 10x. Enhanced algorithm efficiency through scalar optimizations and vectorization using NEON SIMD. Used profiling tools like perf and Ghidra to identify bottlenecks and guide performance improvements, enabling the system to handle real-time image processing with increased accuracy and responsiveness.
● Provost’s Doctoral Fellowship ($31,200) (2022-2023)
● Undergraduate Research Award winner by Undergraduate Research Office at NCSU (Spring 2022)
● Graduated Summa Cum Laude (May 2022)
● Named to the Dean’s List nine out of 10 times (Fall 2017 – May 2022)
● Silver medal winner of the 31st National Mathematics Olympiad (Iran 2014)
Software: VS Code, CCS, Fusion 360, SPICE Simulation, Solidworks, Arduino IDE, MS Office
Programming: C, MATLAB
Microcontroller: nrf5284x family, MSP430FR69xx, Arduino, ATTINY84, CC2640R2F, KL25 Sub-Family (NXP KL25Z128), Raspberry Pi
Embedded System Architectures, Microcontrollers and C Programming Language (MSP430), Wearable Biosensors and Microsystems, Biomedical Signal Processing, Medical Instrumentation, Bioelectricity, Advanced Computational Modeling of Biomedical Devices, Microcontroller Application.