About Tony!
Tony is a senior Computer Engineering student with a minor in Solar and Renewable Energy. He has been working with Dr. Venki since 2024 as part of the UNLV Smart Cities REU and later joined his team the following semester. His main interests are within digital logic design and embedded systems. He also enjoys playing video games and practicing kickboxing in his free time. After graduating, he intends to continue his career at UNLV and earn a Master’s of Science in Electrical Engineering.
Current Roles:
Tony has worked on a range of different projects in the lab, but his primary focus has been on the Water Droplet Penetration Testing (WDPT). The purpose of WDPT is to be able to autonomously detect and analyse water droplets on varying soils to understand the properties of the soil. The project required programming and controlling electronics to control a delta robot for positioning of the water droplet and remote triggering of the dropper as well as computer vision to automatically analyze the water droplet. Currently, to further the project, Tony has been working with a stereo depth camera to detect optimal landing locations for UAVs to perform the water droplet test.
Research interests:
- Self-levelling UAV landing mechanisms
- Microcontroller development
- Autonomous indoor UAV/Robot navigation
- FPGA applications
Education:
- B.S in Computer Engineering — University of of Nevada, Las Vegas (expected May 2026)