Aayushya
Patel

Built a 6-DOF robotic arm with embedded control for safe delivery of DBD plasma therapy to wound surfaces. Integrated LiDAR and IR thermal imaging for automated surface mapping and G-code path generation — achieving sub-millimeter positional accuracy (mean error: 0.027mm, max: 0.069mm). Published in IEEE Xplore.

Led a team of 7 researchers to build three novel Theory of Mind benchmark datasets. Evaluated GPT-4o Mini against Phi-Mamba on complex ToM reasoning tasks, surfacing fundamental architectural trade-offs between transformers and SSMs. Accepted at NAACL Student Research Workshop.

Designing the physical hardware layer of a system that tracks household food consumption to provide budget-optimized, waste-reducing nutritional guidance — specifically targeting food-insecure families. Currently in active development.

Completed advanced hands-on training at Illumina in genome engineering, DNA sequencing workflows, and spectroscopy (IR, UV-Vis) — expanding my toolkit from robotics into the molecular layer of bioengineering.