Neelesh Ramachandran

Stanford University (M.S. in Electrical Engineering)
Graduated UC Berkeley in 2022 (B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences)

neeleshr (at) stanford.edu
LinkedIn
CV / Resume

Hello and welcome! I'm Neelesh, feel free to read below for more information about me!

Experiences

Industry

  • [2022] Apple Wireless Platform Architecture intern.
  • [2021] Apple SoC Design Verification Intern, PMGR (Power Manager) team.
  • [2020] Custom Hearing Aid Design and Development (Solo Project Lead) at a startup, MuMec

Research

Recent Accomplishments

In Spring 2022, I helped complete a successful tapeout of a mixed-signal chip in a FinFET technology (from start to finish in 1 semester). I worked on the RF Analog team and designed, tested, and laid-out out the baseband components of the radio front-end (varible-gain amplifier, multiple-feedback active bandpass filter, current DAC, and other blocks). Details on the design will be described soon under Projects.

My teaching ratings across 4 semesters as a TA at UC Berkeley (Fall 2020 through to Spring 2022) averaged 4.75, compared to a department average of about 4.4. I greatly enjoyed teaching EECS 16A and EECS 16B for 7 semesters, and am hoping to continue teaching at Stanford.

In Fall 2020, my partner and I won the EECS 151 FPGA Lab Outstanding Project Design Award for our RISC-V Processor Design, and I placed as a top 3 finalist for my EE 140 2-stage LCD Driver (Analog Amplifier) Design. Both competitions were sponsored and judged by Apple designers.

In Summer 2020, I wrote a book for the class I was TA'ing, EECS 16A. It contains condensed content summaries and detailed practice problems and solutions to accompany the course notes. 33k visits and counting!

More About Me

As an electrical engineering Master's student, I enjoy integrating my interest in circuits with my knowledge of software systems and scripting. I've formally studied programming, OS, and systems at UC Berkeley during my undergraduate education but primarily worked with PCBs, circuits, ICs, development boards, etc. in my research and other club/class projects. I'm always looking to integrate these domains, improving hardware design and efficiency by exploring the EE/CS interface.

My interest in physics and math in high school quickly grew into a love of application-oriented problem-solving after my first electrical engineering internship at ATX Networks. There, after familiarizing myself with the full suite of hardware test equipment, I primarily worked on optimizing an optical network performance model to enhance the placement of telecom equipment. Once at UC Berkeley as a college student, I realized that I specifically enjoy analyzing, designing, and optimizing circuits. Additionally, though I didn't yet have much of a background in computer science, I quickly gained familiarity with various tools and technologies through my coursework and by learning from my more CS-oriented peers. Most recently, I worked with a startup, MuMec, to build a next-gen hearing aid device with new features and optimal performance metrics.

I view the pursuit of knowledge as akin to building the ideal spider web, where new topics I encounter are wispy strands. Building the web in many new directions may seem productive at the start because it covers so much area, but the structure itself won't last long. It's worked far better for me to build a sturdy base as a foundation to springboard new intellectual endeavors off of. I've applied this strategy to my studies in EE, mastering introductory content as an EECS 16 series TA even as I take upper division courses myself. Despite my focus in EE, I've also taken the foundational classes in CS that many software engineers take. This has helped me gain exposure to a different kind of problem-solving (inherent in algorithms and programming), and I can now teach someone else in a way that helps them visualize concepts through my eyes.