Hi! I'm Ray – a graduate student at MIT, studying Mechanical Engineering in pursuit of a PhD. My research experience spans metal and polymer additive manufacturing, rapid prototyping, computational simulation, mechanical design, and software development. I’m always working on a slew of personal projects, too! Feel free to browse highlights of what I’ve been up to recently.
It's official - I'm heading to Cambridge this fall to embark on a Mechanical Engineering PhD at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. I'll be working in Prof. John Hart's Mechanosynthesis Group, studying & performing research that studies new ways of tailoring materials' surface characteristics using additive menufacturing and architected structures. Stay tuned for more details about my research there!
I've got a new coding project brewing! My joint interest in math (esp. geometry), design, and computer graphics have led me down many wikipedia rabbitholes related to implicit field-driven representations of solid volumes. Via signed distance functions, it's possible to represent nearly any surface, even of infinite complexity, using closed-form functional expressions - a solution that solves many of the issues with polygonal surface representations, but introduces a host of new and exciting mathematical challenges. I'm interested in the engineering & aesthethic implications of this area, and so I've started work on Imp 3D (short for 'implicit'), an online design space for exploring implicit surfaces. Hopefully, more documentation and examples to come soon!
On May 12th I graduated magna cum laude from Duke University, with a BSE in Mechanical Engineering and a minor in computer science. In addition to graduating with departmental distinction for my undergraduate research, I was honored to receive the Raymond C. Gaugler Award in Materials Science & Engineering, for academic excellence in Materials Science. Now I'm on to the next chapter in Boston. Stay tuned!!
In my senior year, I'm an RA in Duke's Craven Quad - home to almost 400 residents! In August, I moved in early to participate in two weeks of training covering community building, residential leadership, and safety procedures. My favorite part was our kick-off rally welcoming 1500+ freshmen - the Class of 2027 - inside the legendary Cameron Indoor Stadium, where they joined their new 'houses' as part of Duke's new QuadEx residential living and learning model. Halfway through the first semester, things are going great; I've hosted community events and faculty dinners, and I've loved getting to know the 25 students in my section.
In September I presented original work for the first time at an international conference -the 12th Annual Constructal Law Conference, in Turin, Italy! The conference draws scholars from around the world to discuss representational similarities and connections between many types of physical systems - from economics to geology - and explores modelling them through the tenets of fundamental principles of heat & mass transfer. My presentation, A Constructal Perspective on the Time Evolution of Social Networks, reflected on the propagation of online & physical social networks as hierarchical flow systems, and presented a framework for modelling the propagation of online information. My professor and mentor, Professor Adrian Bejan was awarded the Benjamin Franklin Medal in 2018 for "his pioneering interdisciplinary contributions in thermodynamics and convection heat transfer that have improved the performance of engineering systems, and for constructal theory, which predicts natural design and its evolution in engineering, scientific, and social systems.” Link to Conference Proceedings 📃
I'm honored to have been awarded APL’s 2022 Noble Prize for “courageous pursuit of bold discovery” - one of 23 Annual Achievement Awards granted across the 8,500-person research organization. The award recognizes my team's work on the project MAINER (Manipulating Atmospheric Ice Nucleation Events, Redux), which targets the development of novel bio-derived cloud seeding applications. My role on the project involved performing data aggregation and analysis from satellite imagery, to uncover global patterns in high-atmospheric cloud formation. I led the team’s cloud data analysis by accessing data from a variety of earth-observing satellites. I accomplished this via NASA's Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS) - a powerful tool for for managing NASA Earth science data from various sources (e.g. satellites, aircraft, field measurements, other programs) in one place. I used python libraries such as Cartopy for cartopgraphic projections, BeautifulSoup for web scraping, Matplotlib for visualization, and SciPy for regression, interpolation, and prediction. The full APL Achievement Awards press release can be read here.
I'm excited to say that my first public, peer-reviewed publication is out! A CDC-sponsored project that I collaborated on during summer 2022 just got through the public release process and was published in the APL Technical Digest: Computational Fluid Dynamics for Public Health and Safety, Darragh R., Campbell V., Winstead P., Lennon R., Stiles C., JHU APL Technical Digest (ISSN 0270-5214) Throughout the project, I created interactive applications to explore data from airflow simulations of surgical environments. Currently, the CDC is applying my team's results to make operating rooms safer and contaminant-free by optimizing the configuration of vents and objects in these rooms to divert particle flows away from medical staff. Read the full paper, or view the page for the current APL Technical Digest issue.
The Zero Gallery, located in Duke's Wilkinson Engineering Building, showcases the creative work of the Pratt community. My submission, Unicycle, is featured in the 23-24 season's collection "Work in Progress." Wireframe and clay render printed on pearl paper.
Duke IGNITE is a 2-day hackathon focused on learning and inclusivity. Teams are matched with an experienced student mentor to help teams scope, architect, and debug projects from start to finish. As an IGNITE mentor, I was excited to host a Blender 3D modelling workshop this past weekend! I taught a group of fellow Duke students the capabilities of Blender, my favorite piece of open-source 3D software, as it pertains to creating low-poly models for game development and animation. We went over the fundamentals of geometry-based modelling, topology, sculpting, and material assignment. Blender users can download the class's end-result .blend file, or watch the full workshop recording.
Throughout my Junior year, I've led an independent research project in the area of metal additively-manufactured lattice structures for bone implants! As part of Dr. Kenneth Gall's group at Duke, I’ve been leading an independent research project improving design of titanium 3D-printed metamaterials for seamless orthopedic integration into bone tissue. I design, manufacture, test, and simulate gyroid structures made from Ti6Al4V and study how their varying geometry affects their structural properties. In collaboration with the medical school, I've used a combination of tensile, compressive, and torsional load frame analyses to fully characterize the gyroidal lattices as mechanical metamaterials. This experimental process is performed in parallel with an ongoing finite element study, which will offer additional insight into the structures' robustness against fatigue. These structures are designed to "osiointegrate" - meaning that the surrounding bone is able to grown into them. I'm aiming to publish a paper with my findings in the fall: stay tuned!
During a quiet moment of my makerspace TA office hours, an idea struck for a new project. I started tinkering with a Raspberry Pi, a mobile phone charger, and some scrounged parts, and wound up creating a robot! The robot, known around Duke as "Ray's Dog", runs a python Flask server over campus wifi. It's equipped with a livestreaming camera, an LCD display for custom messages/ faces, and two bidirectional two motors. He likes hanging out on the BC plaza, couriering messages to friends and weaving through tables and chairs. Thanks to his web-based UI, anyone on a campus network can control him via raysdog.wireless.duke.edu (if school's in session and he isn't taking a nap, that is). Ray's Dog was invited to participate in Duke's Innovation Co-Lab Makerfair 2023 - he made a ton of new friends, and got some great recommendations for new features! Check out his GitHub repository!
HackMIT 2022 was a blast. I flew to Boston and almost immediately got to work brainstorming project ideas with my three-person team (myself, and two CMU computer science students). Our team connected over a shared love at the intersection of design and tech, and we landed on an idea to create an open-ended video game loosely inspired by Shel Silverstein's 'The Giving Tree' – we called our game Roots. The game's premise is simple: as a tree, decide whether to grow roots or branches as the forest environment around you symbiotically responds and adapts. To survive storms, your tree must have a strong root structure, yet growing branches is how you make a habitat for your fellow forest friends. I concentrated on designing and building our 3d assets in Blender, and my teammates architected the game mechanics in Unity. For our game's unique concept and visual style, as well as its themes of connectness and selflessness, our team was the sole winner of the Meta Metaverse Challenge, and each of us was awarded a pair of RayBans Stories. Roots Project Demo Page
I was selected to participate in DukeEngage Uganda - an international engineering volunteer program based in the country's captital of Kampala. I lived in a house with 16 engineering students: eight from Makerere University, and eight from Duke. Over two months of living and working together in Kampala's dense urban center, I gained both a profound appreciation for the living and working cultures of Uganda as well as a working proficiency in Luganda, the predominant tribal language. I also became lifelong friends with my two Ugandan roommates, Edgar and James. Every day brought something new; whether journeying to crowded wet markets, the coast of Lake Victoria, or the country's rainforest heartlands, I was awestruck by the country's vibrance and variety. Standout memories include the 5-foot tall Marabou storks, the incredible fresh fruit, the resourceful and energetic street vendors, and, of course, the flocks of playful monkeys.
During DukeEngage Uganda, I lived and collaborated with Biomedical students at Makerere University, to create novel engineering solutions for local healthcare related challenges. The program prioritizes well-scoped, high-impact problems using techniques that are suited for a low-income environments. To become better-informed about community needs, my team traveled to hospitals throughout Kampala, conducting ethnographic research by interviewing healthcare workers and observing current systems in place. After witnessing jaundiced newborns in overcrowded lightboxes, my team designed and built a low-cost phototherapy machine. Our functioning prototype was presented to medical staff at local hospitals and was assembled with materials totaling approximately 20% the cost of comparable industry solutions. Its electronics include recycled medical-grade LEDs and a locally etched PCB board. We also designed the hardware to be manufactured and assembled by local tradesmen, including window, furniture, and coffin makers. Our project was presented at Ugandan Safe Motherhood Conference, Health Promotion Conference Uganda, and Uganda Pediatrician Conference 2022 Link to the full poster 📃
I started an education technology company called Realms with two Duke MBA students, and incubated it under Duke Innovation & Entrepreneurship. The goal of Realms is to make Zoom classrooms more engaging: the app collects live comprehension feedback from students and uses it to identify challenge areas and offer at-a-glance course feedback for professors. Continuing my project from HackDuke 2021, I led development on front and back-end systems for the app, including an interactive HTML interface and cloud-hosted database. Throughout the development process I learned how to set up a massively scalable NodeJS server on AWS, how to integrate database structures with MongoDB, and how to integrate the entire platform as an OAuth Zoom app. During development of a functioning prototype, Realms was pitched to several universities - including UNC, Duke, and NC State - drawing widespread interest and feedback. Realms About Page
I've long been interested in computer graphics and digital sculpture. In ARTSVIS 198 - Experimental Interface Design, I had the chance to imagine a new way of experiencing sculpture through a digital lens. My project, dubbed 'Sculpture 2.0', envisioned a way to generate 3d objects using a combination of VR, hand-tracking, and AI. To create a demonstration of my concept, I drew mock-ups and created a side-by-side video of the product demo. Check out a demonstration of a sculpture timelapse as a 3D environmental overlay, and see this demo of the proposed hand-tracking sculpture features.
Duke eNable is a student-run organization that creates low cost, opensource, 3D printed prosthetic devices for amputees in the Durham community. Over the last year, I've served as a designer on Team Jack, which serves a member of the community who wants to resume running with weights despite the loss of his hand. I developed open-source hardware using my experience in CAD, additive manufacturing, and organic surface modelling. In particular, I was able to independently reverse-engineer the mechanism behind ‘Boa’ dial-tightened boots, and apply the same underlying technology to create comfortable low-cost prosthetic mounts. Through developments in 3D scanning, electronics fabrication, casting, and additive manufacturing, we’re still striving to improve prosthetic technologies in ways that lower costs and mechanical complexity, while keeping the aspects that most improve users’ day-to-day life. I'm excited to start a new role on team Leyman - which will also design a prosthetic for a Durham individual who lost his hand - next fall!
For my first-year engineering design course, I spent eight months programming a dead-reckoning motion tracking algorithm for undersea rovers. Off the coast of Chile, seaweed farmers face danger by diving to cut and collect seaweed stalks. Creating a robot for this operation is challenged by the lack of visibility underwater. To solve this challenge, my team was tasked with developing a dead-reckoning orientation system informed by the motion of the ROV's wheels. I examined how sand drift, encoder imprecision, and sea currents affect the accuracy of localization, and my code is currently in use by coastal farms in Chile for tracking remotely operated seaweed harvesting robots. Check out a video of our prototype rover and tracking system here, and check out my GitHub repository.
Early in the Fall 2020 semester, I joined a new virtual undergraduate research team, mentored by Dr. Ingrid Daubechies, Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering. In a collaboration between the North Carolina Museum of Art (NCMA) and Duke Math Department, our challenge was to develop algorithms and user interfaces in MATLAB to detect and repair cracks in digital photographs of 12th-century Jacopino frescos, and restore colors based on mathematical sampling. Over 11 months, I had two roles: first, I developed linear-algebra based algorithm for surface anomaly detection in digital photographs. The algorithm would "inpaint", or correct, the areas of the paintings that had been scratched or blemished. Secondly, I used my background in computer graphics to enable a virtual exhibit of paintings that feature gold leaf backings; the reflective, glinting nature of these artworks didn't come across in photographs, so I spearheaded an effort to render them in a way that would enable future VR exhibits that shift dynamically based on the user's perspective.
Updated July 2024: Part of the reason for making this site is to improve my web development skills. Ray.red was originally hosted on an AWS webserver with a Elastic Beanstalk instance, with a code pipeline that populated an S3 bucket with updates to my Github repo. Nowadays, I've realized that a dynamic site is totally overkill (until someday I decide to add a login page and microtransactions). The site is still written with a NodeJS backend, but within in a Vite environment which simplifies my development/build process. As for frontend, I populate the site with images & blog posts using EJS templates and Bootstrap for styling & components. The /docs folder of the repository is hosted statically using Github pages.
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