Not quite everything you could possibly want to know about Lydia
... but most of the useful bits

That would be a photo of me. I am a graduate student in electrical engineering here at UIUC. I'm currently working on my masters, but I plan to continue on to the PhD. I am interested in a wide variety of fields, like: Speech recognition Artificial intelligence Linguistics and language (In addition to English I speak Spanish, Hindi, Portuguese, and I'm learning Chinese) Semiconductors Robotics Audio engineering and music synthesis Some things that I like that are less related to my field are: Dance! I am often found about town dancing salsa, merengue, or samba. Bikes. I ride them, I repair them, I encourage other people to use them instead of cars. Mexico. I lived there for a while a couple years ago, I sometimes miss it. Capoeria. Its an Afro-Brazilian art form which is both a martial art and a dance. Coffee. Oh, the sweet nectar of life! I would be lost without my espresso machine.

My classes for Fall 2007 are:

• Speech Processing Fundamentals
• Pattern Recognition

I have a blog! Its about my academic and professional activities, and occasionally those of others. You should check it out.


Here are some interesting places and people I've worked with:

• The CAVE at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications. I took an independent study class where I developed programs for the CAVE. My final project was an experiment in multisensor motion tracking.
• Honeywell Solid State Electronics Center. I was an intern in the mixed signal department during the summer of 2004.
• CubeSat @ U of I. I worked on the power generation and distribution system for the ION 2 satellite.
• UIUC Speech and Language Engineering Group. I did a senior thesis on morpheme based speech recognition for Spanish telephone speech. My advisor was Mark Hasegawa-Johnson.
• ECE 444. I'm a lab TA for Integrated Circuit Fabrication. Students make devices from scratch on a bare silicon wafer. The idea is to learn about the basics of IC processing.
• Illini Bicycle Project. I'm the head of the design team for this. Our goal is to create an automatic checkout system where students can borrow bikes for the day.
• Technology Entrepreneur Center. I've been working with TEC developing a low cost solar powered LED lantern for sale in non-electrified communities in the developing world. We're designing it to last at least 5 years, and cost the same as one year of the kerosene which it would replace.
• Language Acquisition and Robotics Group. This is my current research group.

I have an online photo album, which as of right now contains only photos of my most recent trip to Mexico, but will expand to other trips as I make them. See it here.

If you have any thoughts or questions, or just need a way to liven up the tedium of everyday life, email me: {mylastname} AT uiuc DOT edu.

Last updated on 6/23/2007.