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Akshay

Akshay Shivkumar

Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences. Building thoughtful hardware and software.

Internships

iSono Health

Embedded Software Engineer — iSono Health

Jun 2025 – Aug 2025

Stepper motors are fun until you have to calibrate them for three hours straight — so I automated that. What used to take half a day for the device manufacturers now takes 30 minutes. I used lasers for precision testing (because lasers make everything cooler), computer vision, and Python + serial comms to tie it all together.

Then I dove into C and C# firmware to make the world’s first ultrasound breast scanner rotate buttery smooth, capture 2.5x more detail, and scan twice as fast — all with fewer wobbles.

Scaled Entelechy

Software Engineer — Scaled Entelechy

Jun 2024 – Jul 2024

Sometimes speech models get a little too confident. So I built one that knows when it’s acting weird. Using Python, NLP, and BERT-based masked language modeling, I designed an anomaly detection system that flags when the ASR goes off-script. Now it doesn’t just listen; it listens smart.

Scaled Entelechy

Data Engineer — Scaled Entelechy

Jun 2022 – Sep 2022

Four interns, three projects, one goal: tame the chaos of data. We designed a linked data graph, built an ETL pipeline for assessment data, and crafted annotation tools to make it all usable. I automated most of the grunt work with Protégé, Python, and Postman — because efficiency > exhaustion (and it paid off: 150% faster team output).

Research

BSAC logo

Embedded Systems and MEMS Researcher

Jun 2025 – Present

Liwei Lin Lab, Berkeley Sensor and Actuator Center

What if sound could feel? We developed a novel tactile sensor using piezoelectric micromachined ultrasonic transducers (pMUTs) to feel pressure — from light taps to sideways pulls. The result? A new way to sense touch, powered by sound waves and headed to IEEE MEMS ‘26 for an oral presentation.

This tech is cool for robots but tech for humans is important too. So I designed and brought up two PCBs: a mini EIS board for sweat sensing on Apple Watch, and a power board to drive a wearable tFUS neuromodulation device.

Projects

9 total

Hobbies

Guitar

Playing guitar is my favorite way to relieve stress. You'll often find me jamming out to Coldplay, blissfully fingerpicking classical fingerstyle, or challenging myself with some (near-impossible) John Mayer riffs.

Tennis

I've been playing tennis since 7th grade, and it remains my favorite physical activity. The sport has taught me discipline, focus, and the importance of continuous practice.

Web Dev

Web development is my creative outlet where I'm able to combine my love for art/design with problem solving. It's pretty straightforward and relaxing - there's nothing better than going to a coffee shop and working on an app for hours.