Kevin Acken

I spoke to over a thousand people at my high school graduation, and the message I gave them is still my mission today: to use the talents God gave me to serve Him and others. What are some of those? Focus, critical thinking, communication, leadership, and intellectual breadth. For my senior capstone engineering project I worked with three other students and mentors from academia and industry to architect, design, build, and test a novel handheld, noninvasive cocoa bean moisture meter. The device hooked into a smartphone and could wirelessly measure the moisture of bagged or loose cocoa beans. I provided technical and administrative leadership: I created an Android app that could interface with our embedded system and send data to the cloud, I drove the documentation and took meeting minutes, and I helped communicate our project to the judges who awarded us best in show for my department at NC State and to the chairs of the Capstone Design Conference 2018 who accepted our poster. My main areas of focus and interest are embedded systems, computer architecture, and digital systems, but I’m also interested in electronic design automation, compilers, and autonomous vehicles, and machine learning. My hobbies include singing and playing the trumpet.