Summer Intership


Nitya Kasturi (CS)
Background: Nitya is a Sophomore (10th Grade) in Henry M. Gunn High School, Palo Alto, CA.

Nitya's Testimony: Originally, I didn’t want to do anything even remotely similar to what my parents do for a living: software engineering. I regretted signing up for my computer science class in high school and didn’t have any way out. After being in the class for several weeks, I realized how much I enjoyed the thrill of reaching a problem and finding a solution for that problem. I further explored the field of engineering after being accepted for a remote internship with Professor Kannan Srinivasan at Ohio State University. I never knew how much diversity engineering had, and I learned how all engineers are essentially doing the same thing: solving problems to improve the quality of life. This internship taught me how to keep an open mindset about everything and to explore new ideas. With my widened experience, I was inspired to apply for my high school’s robotics team. I was accepted only because of the time I spent working on this internship. I look forward to a bright future that will revolve around engineering, because now I cannot imagine doing anything else as a career in my life.

Course Components


St. Stephen's Community House
Middle School Summer Program
The approval of this component is here: MOU.

This project will be offered from Summer 2014, with a potential pilot program in Fall 2013. The whole project will be offered 1-8 times every summer.

The Goal: There is much evidence that children decide NOT to have a career in Engineering when they go to middle school. The goal of this project is to expose them a special topic in Engineering in order to encourage them to consider a career in Engineering. The government of United States has identified wireless technology as key to meeting the ever-growing demand on data. In fact, the government will be opening up 200MHz of spectrum in the next 10 years to address this demand. This demand also means that there is will be a need for Engineers who can work with this technology. Thus, the futuristic goal of this project is to encourage the students of today to consider a career in wireless in the future. Therefore, this project will be focused on wireless/radio technology.

The Project: The project will introduce students to basic radio operations. The students will have hands-on experience building a simple FM radio receiver and then building a walkie-talkie. We will be using laptops connected to USRP software-defined radios for this project. Every group of 2-3 students will be given a laptop, a USRP radio and a WBX daughterboard. Prof. Kannan Srinivasan and his research group (CoSyNe) will provide these hardware components and any documentation to build this project.


Phase I: This project has three phases or sub-projects. The first sub-project will introduce the students to the concept of frequency. In this phase, the students will be looking at the spectrum observed by our software-defined radios. We will use a spectrum analyzer tool in our platform to show the different transmissions going on at different frequencies.

Phase II: In the second phase of the project, the students will choose a frequency from phase 1 and tune to the radio station by directing the output of the USRP source to a speaker.

Phase III: In the third phase of the project, the students will build a walkie-talkie. In this phase, they will design a system that transmit their voice signal and a system that can receive a voice signal. The students can choose from different frequencies so that they can communicate with different groups. The students will also adjust the transmit power to understand how the transmit power is related to the distance of communication.