I am a Research and Development Engineer at Applied Research in Acoustics, LLC. My research is currently in computer vision and computational acoustics.
I received a PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering at The University of Michigan in 2022, advised by Professor Eric Michielssen.
My dissertation was on mathematical methods for long-range wave propagation in rural environments, which is available here.
I graduated in 2018 with a BS in Electrical Engineering from The University of Washington, with a concentration in electromagnetics. I spent two years there as a research assistant
in the Electromagnetics and Remote Sensing Laboratory, studying under Professor Yasuo Kuga and Professor Akira Ishimaru. I designed and programmed a tool
to simulate clutter loss in urban environments, and I also derived equations to model electromagnetic wave scattering off of a distribution of finite size rough rectangular plates.
My research interests are broadly in applied mathematics. My hobby projects involve audio and robotics, and in my free time I race cars, produce electronic music, knit, and street dance.
Projects
Analog Synthesizer
Analog synthesizer designed from scratch in LTspice. I have a VCA, VCO, VCF, and ADSR circuit designed. VCO and VCF have been succesfully prototyped, and the VCO is being assembled.
VCO Printed Circuit Board
VCO Prototype
VCF Prototype
Real Time Convolution Plugin
Audio plugin for music production, made with the IPlug extension of the wdl-ol library. The plugin takes two real-time input tracks and convolves the most recent samples from both tracks together. It can be used for an effect similar to what a vocoder would produce.
Started out as a simple circuit bending project to add distortion to a Casio SA-2 toy synthesizer. I then had the idea to hook up wires to the pins on one of the ICs that led to the switches,
and configured an Arduino to interpret them as MIDI notes. They were then sent to my computer, which allowed me to control a virtual synthesizer with the physical keyboard.
Controlling a virtual instrument with the MIDI controller
University of Washington Husky Robotics Club
One activity was the design of an isolator circuit for the pneumatics system on a rover. The circuit was used to deliver a digital
signal from an Arduino to a MOSFET, which was then used to supply 24V to a motor. An opto-isolator was inserted between the Arduino output
and the MOSFET to ensure that the high voltage and low voltage wires were electrically separated from each other.
The other major activity was a robot battle. We were split into teams and given 3 weeks to design and program an autonomous robot that would try to push others off of a white table.
The edges of the table were marked by black tape, detectable by a line sensor that was given to each group. Our team looked into how we could send false information to these sensors.
We designed a car that would pour flour over the black tape. The intent wasn't for our robot to get into pushing battles, but rather confuse other robots' sensors so they would drive themselves over the edge.
Robot Competition
Rover
Robotic Car
Robotic car that uses two range finders for binocular vision, in order to turn to follow a target in front of it.
Wall-Avoiding Car
Other small projects:
Light-Detecting Sunglasses
Binary Keyboard
Miscellaneous projects can be found on my GitHub account
Publications
M. Bright, E. Michielssen, J. Kusuma, ‘Hybrid Split-Step Fourier – Finite Difference Parabolic Equation Solver for Modeling Propagation Over Complex Terrain’ in IEEE International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation and USNC-URSI Radio Science Meeting, Montreal, QC, 2020.
M. Bright, E. Michielssen, J. Kusuma, ‘Gabor Frame-Based Sparsification and Radiation Boundary Conditions for Parabolic Wave Equations’ in IEEE International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation and USNC-URSI Radio Science Meeting, Atlanta, GA, 2019.
M. Bright, A. Ishimaru, Y. Kuga, ‘Scattering from a Distribution of Rough Plates,’ Progress In Electromagnetics Research C, Vol. 95, 1-13, 2019.
M. Bright, A. Ishimaru, Y. Kuga, ‘Scattering from a Distribution of Rough Plates’ in USNC-URSI National Radio Science Meeting, Boulder, CO, 2018.
B. Walborn, Y. Liu, M. Bright, A. Ishimaru, Y. Kuga, ‘Modeling EM Wave Scattering from Tree Branches and Leaves’ in USNC-URSI National Radio Science Meeting, Boulder, CO, 2018.
