I completed my Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering

In May 2024, I completed my Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering. I was honored by His Highness, Sheikh Khaled Bin Mohamed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, for attaining excellence with the highest honors (i.e., first-class honors). Having graduated high school amid COVID-19, my graduation from university felt phenomenal — a testament to years of hard work leading to a single moment. I am grateful for all the opportunities I had to grow and develop over the past four years, which made me the person I am today. I want to thank Khalifa University faculty, especially Dr. Ammar Nayfeh, Prof. Vinod Khadkikar, and Prof. Hatem Zein El-Din, for their support and guidance. I’m also incredibly grateful to all the friends I made over the years — those I met in university and those I met through my travels. Thank you for being part of my journey. Lastly, and most importantly, I want to thank my parents for their unwavering support throughout my journey.

The past 4 years taught me the importance of pushing boundaries and seeking new experiences. Whether it was participating in the MIT Innovation and Entrepreneurship Bootcamp, studying abroad at Stanford University, or peer tutoring for a year and a half, each opportunity contributed to my growth.

In Summer 2023, I had the opportunity to intern at the University of Tokyo, where I worked on solar cells. Before the internship, I knew that solar cells convert light to electricity, but I quickly realized how much more there is to it. The physics behind it is complex, and efficiency varies depending on the materials used. During the internship, I worked on GaAs solar cells, and I’m incredibly grateful to my mentor, Li Gan, who guided me and deepened my interest in device physics. Besides the technical work, I also had the chance to explore Japan and made some unforgettable memories. I am deeply thankful to Prof. Yoshiaki Nakano and Imaizumi Akiko for offering me this invaluable experience.

Upon returning, I participated in a nuclear summer school, where I learned about Small Module Reactors—quite different from my usual focus, but definitely intriguing! Summer 2023 was by far the most enriching experience of my undergraduate years and provided the perfect break before my final year,, which was a whole new challenge.

I started my senior design project, which focused on digital systems design. My team (Ruba Islayem, Rashad Hashem, and Afra Alzaabi) and I tackled the problem of improving detection speed and power efficiency of object detection systems for autonomous vehicles by offloading the task of lane detection and letting another hardware accelerator, other than the GPU, handle it. It was one of the most challenging projects I’ve worked on, especially given the limited resources available for FPGA-based image processing algorithms. But the journey was rewarding—we presented our work at URC24 Conference, where we received a Best 25 Posters award. I want to extend my gratitude to Prof. Mahmoud Meribout for his support and guidance throughout the project.

Having been working on digital systems design, and taking technical courses from different subfields of electrical engineering, and reflecting upon my experience throughout my internship—I found myself eager to learn more about nanotechnology and electronics, which was my main motivation in doing research under the supervision of Dr. Ammar Nayfeh in spring 2024. I was able to develop my background in nanomaterials and materials science by working on a research project— where my focus was on materials synthesis and characterization. I am incredibly grateful to Dr Ayman Rezk, Awais Zaka and Wafaa Alnaqbi for their mentorship, and Amaan Chougle for his help in using the characterization devices. In my current role, I am seeing how valuable these characterization techniques are to ensure all the chips within the electronics are manufactured properly and have no defects. In the same semester, I also participated in an electronics traineeship program to hone my electronics skills and learn valuable circuit design skills — one of which is the design and assembly of printed circuit boards.

I am incredibly grateful to everyone I met and to the opportunities I have had to grow and develop to become an engineer and a better person over the past four years.

Now, as an intern at GlobalFoundries, I’m applying much of what I’ve learned, but I’m also realizing how much more there is to explore. Nanofabrication is a growing field, and it’s been rewarding to learn and work in this field. I am deeply thankful to Mubadala Investment Company for sponsoring this internship and to Zachary Zelinski for this incredible opportunity.

I’m excited about what the future holds.

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Warmest Gratitude,

Fatima