Sunny Agrawal
"The Department offering of courses such as MIMO, IOT, Smart Antenna, Nano wireless networks makes the field of wireless communication stand out when compared to other universities. This was the reason I chose to pursue my graduate studies at UB."
Level of Study: MS '18
Hometown: Mumbai, India
Why did you choose to study electrical engineering?
Since my childhood, I was very fascinated to see how consumer electronics worked. From a VCR player to Hi-Fi music system, technology changed how we use electronics systems; making them a very important part in everyone's life. VLSI, embedded systems, wireless technology, DSP are one of the many subfields within electrical engineering that have become the core of today's modern lifestyle. While seeing the evolution and innovation in these electronic devices, I always wanted to be a part of electrical engineering society and contribute to it.
What makes UB Electrical Engineering special?
A graduate student will only stand out of the crowd when he has been exposed to the latest technology with a strong technical foundation. UB's EE department always makes sure that every student has this strong foundation that can be later applied in the technological industry. Wireless technology is not new to society, but all new research in this field takes this technology to another level. The Department offering of courses such as MIMO, IOT, Smart Antenna, Nano wireless networks makes the field of wireless communication stand out when compared to other universities. This was the reason I chose to pursue my graduate studies at UB.
A favorite memory of your experiences/classes/projects?
IOT course offered a great way to learn about new technology and gaining experience with respect to the latest technology. Project done in this course was not only challenging but also a good mix of embedded systems, networking and HW designing. I really liked doing the project for this course as it also taught us how to work with our ideas and demonstrate it to others.
Tell us about your career:
After graduating from UB, I joined Silicon Labs as a Wireless Hardware Applications Engineer in Boston. It is a great position where I can apply my technical knowledge to guide the team of engineers on their wireless hardware that uses our wireless IC. This position is purely based on the courses such as IoT, MIMO, Smart antennas, RF fundamentals, Embedded systems, basic analog and digital classes. The job responsibilities involve designing, testing, troubleshooting RF wireless application circuits for the customers and sometimes write a code in C using our software stacks. Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Zigbee, Thread, Zwave and Proprietary are one of the few wireless protocols that I work on along with customers to design their hardware applications circuit with Silicon Labs wireless chips.