[ SYS.ONLINE ] MCMASTER.EE / CO-OP / HAMILTON.ON
Electrical Engineering StudentComputer Architecture, Hardware Systems, Embedded Systems
/01 ABOUT
I'm a third-year electrical engineering student at McMaster who builds projects across a wide variety of subjects. Whether it be computing hardware from the gate up, RTL design, PCB design, or analog circuits, no matter what project I'm working on, I aim to always bring passion to my work. I love learning about the nitty-gritty theory from my classes, but building things and breaking them down is really where I learn most of what I know about hardware.
Computer architecture is the field I am most interested in, and it sits at the intersection of all my interests. Ever since I was little, I have always loved computers and wondered what actually went into designing the processors that run them. Since then, computer architecture and hardware engineering have been my long-term goals as the fields I want to break into. Currently, I'm tackling my interest by working on a single-cycle RISC-V CPU built on a Basys 3 FPGA using Vivado. Alongside computer architecture, embedded systems, especially space systems, is another field I love. Space has always been at the forefront of my mind and one of my greatest interests. In fact, my dream job was to be an astrophysicist! Although I'm on a different path now, I join design teams like rocketry that let me get a small taste of working in large-scale space operations. I work on avionics, which involves designing PCBs for the rocket's electronics that have to survive real flight conditions.
I like dealing with low-level hardware and electronics more than anything. Hence, for a LiDAR project I did in the past few months, I wrote bare-metal C for an MSP432E401Y Arm Cortex-M4 microcontroller. Not only did I learn how to write low-level C, but I also reconfigured the clock and fixed everything that depended on it, including UART baud rate divisors, timer delays, and GPIO interrupt handling. I also had to handle edge cases where the sensor had to read through windows or down sections of the hallway beyond its range. When the hardware side finally worked, I sent the data to my PC, where a MATLAB script used it to draw a 3D point cloud of the hallway I scanned in McMaster's engineering building.
These projects all stem from my overall interest in electronics and my genuine passion for electrical engineering. I always make sure to push myself, further my skills, and tackle projects in interdisciplinary teams to be the best engineer I can be.
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/02 PROJECTS
A single cycle RV32I core in Verilog on a Basys 3 (Artix-7), built from a register file, ALU, control decoder, immediate generator, and branch unit. The datapath is verified with a self checking testbench suite in xsim that diffs architectural state against golden values per instruction class. A Tcl build script automates the Vivado flow, driving batch mode synthesis, implementation, and bitstream generation, exporting timing, utilization, and DRC reports and running static timing analysis on the critical path.
A two player Pong game in Verilog on the Basys 3, driving a VGA display from a divided down pixel clock with correct front porch, sync pulse, and back porch timing. Paddle, ball, and collision logic run as pixel clock synchronous FSMs with debounced inputs, and the score drives the multiplexed 7 segment display.
A spatial mapping device that acquires distance measurements using a time of flight sensor, processes the data on an MSP432E401Y, and transmits it to a PC for 3D visualization through MATLAB. A VL53L1X ToF sensor rides a VMA401 stepper through a full 360 degree rotation, taking 32 measurements at 11.25 degree intervals over I2C. Hitting the required 34 MHz bus meant reclocking the PLL from 120 MHz, setting MINT to 68 and PSYSDIV to 9, then recalculating the UART baud divisors and the SysTick delay to match, verified against an oscilloscope. MATLAB converts the polar readings to Cartesian and renders the scans as a 3D point cloud. Sixteen consecutive scans reconstruct an indoor hallway for roughly $120 in parts.
A set of analog building blocks designed and tested at the transistor level. Includes a DC power supply with rectifier, filter, and regulator, a MOSFET voltage controlled switch, a single transistor amplifier, a transistor level MOSFET XOR gate, and a 3 bit DAC.
A calibrated prediction engine and tournament simulator for the 2026 World Cup. A Dixon-Coles Poisson model is fit in Python on international results back to 1872, then a seeded TypeScript Monte Carlo engine plays all 104 matches tens of thousands of times in a Web Worker. A full manager mode sits on top. Built with Youssef Khafagy.
An interactive bit level number visualizer. One integer is shown across binary, hex, signed, and unsigned forms with a clickable bit grid, and every flip updates two's complement, carry, overflow, shifts, rotates, and popcount live. BigInt backed and masked to 8, 16, or 32 bits.
A hackathon team project. An AI assisted hospital intake tool that collects a patient's story once, turns it into a structured summary with a suggested urgency and red flags, and puts it in front of staff in a live queue ordered by urgency then arrival. The AI never makes the final call. Staff override the urgency, add notes, and finalize every triage themselves. Patients watch their own status and estimated wait update as the queue moves.
MATLAB scripts that solve electromagnetics problems, from field calculations to wave behavior, with plots that turn the math into a readable output and visual solution.
A first year cornerstone team design project. A Python check in system paired with a 3D printed mechanism that reads a bag's barcode and routes it to the plane or the rejection bin. I was the team's main coder, writing the passenger and flight data functions, the graphical output, and the control code for the rotary actuator and robotic arm. When bags kept sliding out of the ramp, I proposed adding side railings, and the team adopted the change in the final model.
A first year cornerstone team design project run through McMaster's IMPACT initiative, designing an assistive kitchen tool for a community client with combined vision and hearing impairment. The team shipped a hinge based lever cutter modelled in Autodesk Inventor and 3D printed in PLA, coming in at 1.27 kg and $7.18 in materials against a 4 kg and $100 constraint. I was the subject matter expert, covering client notes, materials research, purchasing, and fabrication.
A system design for mitigating stormwater runoff in Hamilton's urban landscape, built through the MacChangers program. I discussed and troubleshooted the design with Hamilton city management and senior officials.
A technical research report on why materials are diamagnetic, paramagnetic, or ferromagnetic, traced to electron spin, orbital motion, and the exchange interaction, with each class linked to its real engineering use from transformer cores to MRI and maglev.
A first year cornerstone team design project selecting a filter material for a plant treating runoff from a nearby nuclear facility. I was the subject matter expert, running material performance index analysis in Ansys Granta, building the life cycle inventory, and writing most of the final report. The team's decision matrix put coir fiber ahead of cotton fiber and flexible polymer foam, and it held up after recalculating yield strength for porosity.
/03 EXPERIENCE
MAY 2026 / AUG 2026
McMaster Engineering Community Outreach
Took two boards from schematic to a 400 unit production run, then built the lab that assembled them. A 555 timer LED array and a 74HC series 4 bit adder, both designed in KiCad.
DETAILS.LOG
SEP 2025 / PRESENT
McMaster Rocketry Team
Working on the avionics and control systems for a rocket that has to survive real flight conditions.
DETAILS.LOG
AUG 2025 / APR 2026
Chem-E-Car
Worked on the circuitry team, focused on automating the starting and stopping chemical reactions of the car.
DETAILS.LOG
SEP 2024 / APR 2025
MacChangers, Stormwater Project
Took a vague city problem and scoped it into something buildable. The result was HydroSink, a stormwater runoff concept for Hamilton.
DETAILS.LOG
/04 EDUCATION
SEP 2024 / APR 2029
McMaster University
3.9 GPA, top 15% of class. Dean's Honour List and the Engineering Award of Excellence Scholarship. Coursework runs from circuit analysis through microprocessor systems and logic design.
DETAILS.LOG
SEP 2020 / JUN 2024
St. John Henry Newman Catholic Secondary School, Stoney Creek, ON
Graduated with an Award of Academic Excellence and a focus on STEM.
DETAILS.LOG
/05 CONTACT
If you want to talk about computer architecture, embedded systems, anything going on in tech, or anything else on this page, I am always up for it. Email reaches me fastest.
subhanrazzaq777@gmail.com
