Available for work · Open to relocate · Texas

Karim Ray Mahdi

Electrical Engineer

I design, build, and validate hardware, taking boards from schematic capture through prototype bring-up and bench testing. I work across the digital, analog, and power sides of a board, and I'm at my best root-causing why a first revision fails and proving the fix with a measurement.

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Texas Tech University · B.S. Electrical Engineering

About

From schematic to a validated board

I graduated from Texas Tech with a B.S. in Electrical Engineering in August 2026, with a minor in Mathematics. I work across the digital, analog, power, and embedded parts of a board, from design and simulation through bring-up, measurement, and validation. I'm most comfortable where those layers meet, since that's where most real problems show up.

Design & embedded

I work on both sides of a board. On the digital side: RTL and embedded firmware, FPGA signal processing with fixed, deterministic latency, and real-time control as finite state machines on MSP430 and STM32, with attention to timing closure and clock-domain crossing. On the analog and power side: protection circuits, DC-DC and LDO rails, and the mixed-signal issues where they meet the digital. I work in Verilog, VHDL, C, MATLAB, and Python, and I check my logic against post-synthesis behavior, not simulation alone.

Bring-up, test & validation

I take designs from schematic capture through multilayer layout, then bring them up in a controlled sequence: rails under a current limit, then the analog stages, then the digital. I validate and debug by measurement, on the oscilloscope, DMM, spectrum analyzer, function generator, and bench supply, isolating a fault to the exact node. On the secure-wallet board that meant seven revisions to clear noise and signal-integrity issues; on the 40 V protection board, a switching fault traced from the MOSFET gate-drive waveform under transient load.

Coursework Signals and Systems · Network Analysis · Control Systems · Electromagnetic Fields · Advanced Circuits · VLSI Design · Digital System Design · Embedded Systems · Power Electronics · Power Systems · Solar Systems · Machine Learning · Robotics

Skills

What I work with

Grouped around digital-hardware work: FPGA and digital logic, board-level design, and bench validation.

FPGA & Digital Logic

VerilogVHDLFPGA State machinesTiming analysis VLSI DesignDigital System Design

Embedded & Interfaces

MSP430ARM CortexSTM32 NVIDIA JetsonI²CSPIUART

Languages

PythonCC++ RustMATLABLabVIEW

Board Design & EDA

Schematic captureAltiumEAGLE 4-layer layoutSignal integrity LTspiceMultisimSimulink

Test & Measurement

OscilloscopeDMMSpectrum analyzer Function generatorBench supplyBoard bring-up

Power & Analog

DC-DC conversionOCP / OVPReverse-polarity Protection circuitsFMEA

Projects

Selected work

Digital control, board-level design, and bench validation. Code and build notes are on GitHub.

Power Systems Project Lab

Smart 40 V / 5 A DC Protection & Monitoring

A protection board that watches for reverse polarity, overvoltage, and overcurrent. A P-channel high-side MOSFET isolates the load, a zener sets the overvoltage trip, and the board restores itself once the fault clears. Live voltage, current, and fault state on an I²C LCD. I designed it from schematic capture through bring-up, and traced a switching fault by reading the MOSFET gate drive on the scope under steady-state and transient load.

Schematic → bring-upP-ch MOSFETI²COscilloscope

View code

Embedded Systems Project Lab

Autonomous Minesweeper Rover

An autonomous rover I programmed in embedded C on an MSP430FR6989, running its motion as a real-time state machine. It homes on an IR beacon with obstacle avoidance, detects metal washers with inductive proximity sensors, and picks them up with a rail-mounted electromagnet driven along the rail by a stepper. Separate 12 V, 5 V, and 3.3 V rails feed the actuators, the controller, and the sensors so switching noise stays off the logic.

MSP430FR6989Embedded CState machineInductive sensing

View code

Tech Innovation Labs

Wearable EMG Neural Interface

A wearable that turns muscle activity into control signals, with the signal processing on an FPGA for fixed, deterministic latency. I designed the power electronics for the PCB in Altium and ran several rounds of board-level PCBA validation. The validation pipeline reads the user's handwriting on a tablet with OCR as a ground-truth reference, then cross-checks it against the arm's signal output to score model accuracy and guide fine-tuning.

FPGAAltiumAnalog front endPCBA validation

View code

Microcontroller Project Lab

OCR-Based AI Mail Sorting Machine

A mail sorter on an NVIDIA Jetson Orin that reads handwritten addresses in real time with a custom YOLO detector, EasyOCR, and a lightweight LLaMA model, then drives the motors and sensors that route each piece. Built on a conveyor powered by DC-DC converters and LDOs supplying regulated 12 V, 5 V, and 3.3 V rails, running on Linux. The hard part was getting a probabilistic perception pipeline to hand off cleanly to deterministic motor control.

Jetson OrinPythonDC-DC + LDO railsMotor control

View code

Senior Capstone

Predictive Motor Failure Detection

A real-time monitor that detects and grades early BLDC motor faults from current, temperature, and vibration before the motor fails. I designed and built the custom sensing and control PCB: an INA240 current-sense front end, an NTC, a KX134 accelerometer, and Hall taps into an STM32F401RE, with a BLD-510B driving the motor. The firmware extracts per-second features and runs a decision-tree classifier on the board, and a Raspberry Pi touchscreen shows the live verdict.

Custom PCBSTM32F401REKX134Decision tree

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Motonari Studio

Secure Hardware Wallet (4-layer STM32)

A secure cold-storage device built around an STM32 and a secure element. I helped lay out the 4-layer board to make probing the secure element harder while keeping the ground plane, USB differential pair, and power rails clean. I taught myself PCB design on this board and ran 7 revisions, chasing noise and signal-integrity problems on the oscilloscope and spectrum analyzer until it met spec.

4-layer PCBSTM32USB diff pairSignal integrity

View code

Experience

Professional experience

Motonari Studio, Co-FounderAustin, TX · Oct 2022 to Oct 2024

Co-founded a hardware startup building a secure cold-storage wallet. I helped design the 4-layer board around an STM32 and a secure element, laying it out to make probing the secure element harder while keeping the ground plane, USB pair, and power rails clean. I taught myself PCB fundamentals on this board and ran 7 revisions, debugging noise and signal-integrity issues on the scope and spectrum analyzer until the board met spec.

UN Development Program, Sustainable Energy Research InternRemote · May 2022 to Aug 2022

Analyzed generation data and energy reports for solar PV and wind projects in crisis-affected regions, tracking load and capacity trends for the team's briefings. I built Python and Pandas workflows to clean and consolidate fragmented datasets, reconciling inconsistent units and gaps into the summary tables used in project reporting.

Tech Innovation Labs, Texas Tech · Co-Founder / PresidentLubbock, TX · Dec 2024 to Aug 2026

Built and led a 25-member student organization focused on embedded systems, computer vision, and AI. I coordinated IEEE technical sessions, presented the org to the Texas Tech Board of Regents and the Dean of Engineering to secure project funding, and prepared teams for the Microsoft Imagine Cup and the NVIDIA AI City Challenge.

Contact

Get in touch

I graduated with a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Texas Tech in August 2026, and I'm open to relocating anywhere in Texas or beyond. If you'd like the board files, the firmware, or a walkthrough of any of the work above, reach out or find the code on GitHub.

Email me GitHub LinkedIn Résumé (PDF)