Ben taking a mirror photo on a train

About me

Hey, I’m Ben. I’m a rising third-year Computer Science & Engineering student at UC Merced, and I’m planning a second major in Electrical Engineering.

Most days I’m moving between embedded systems, robotics, and whatever I’m trying to understand next. Outside of work, I like cameras, technology, music, anime, cars, sports, and spending time with friends.

I also love writing and thinking about life. This site is simply a place to keep some of the work and things I care about.

What I’mworking on

Summer 2026 · 12 weeks

Coherent

Embedded Systems Intern

Embedded systems and firmware migration.

Evaluating an embedded development environment, tracing its build and deployment process, and documenting repeatable migration findings.

Ben with two friends from his internship at Coherent
More about Coherent

I spent the internship learning an unfamiliar firmware system by following the evidence produced by its build process and checking it against behavior on hardware.

  • Completed a roughly twelve-week evaluation of an embedded development toolchain.
  • Traced the build and deployment process to isolate migration differences and test fixes on hardware.
  • Created repeatable validation checks and documented the findings for the engineers continuing the work.
Read the field note →
An STM32 development board used during Ben’s work at Coherent
Feb 2026 — now

YuCCA Lab ↗

Undergraduate Research Assistant

Autonomous orchard robotics.

Working on an agricultural rover that combines LiDAR, RGB-D cameras, GPS, ROS2, and a Jetson Orin Nano to navigate orchard rows.

YuCCA Lab depth-camera workspace displaying a point cloud in RViz
More about YuCCA Lab

The lab work is centered on an autonomous agricultural rover designed to navigate real orchard rows.

yuccalab.ucmerced.edu ↗
  • Integrating LiDAR, RGB-D cameras, GPS, and ROS2 around a Jetson Orin Nano.
  • Developing a perception stack for orchard navigation with LiDAR-camera fusion and object detection.
  • Working through the gap between a system that functions in a controlled environment and one that survives field conditions.
LiDAR point-cloud map displayed in RViz at YuCCA Lab
Camera feed being monitored through RViz at YuCCA Lab
Colorized LiDAR point cloud on a YuCCA Lab workstation
Studying nowFall 2026 · UC Merced

This semester

After finishing Linear Algebra and Differential Equations, I’m moving across physics, electrical engineering, computer science, and mechanics. It is a mix that lines up closely with where I want to go in firmware and robotics.

01PHYS 009

Introductory Physics II

Electricity, magnetism, electromagnetic waves, optics, and modern physics.

  • electromagnetism
  • circuits
  • optics
02EE 060

Digital Systems Design

Boolean logic, combinational and sequential circuits, and the foundations of digital hardware.

  • digital logic
  • circuits
  • hardware
03CSE 100

Algorithm Design and Analysis

Algorithm complexity, divide and conquer, dynamic programming, greedy methods, and graph algorithms.

  • complexity
  • algorithms
  • graphs
04ENGR 057

Dynamics

Particle and rigid-body kinematics, equations of motion, energy, and momentum.

  • kinematics
  • rigid bodies
  • energy
UC Merced course catalog ↗