Spandan Kottakota
I'man Electrical Engineering Student, an Undergraduate Researcher, a Robotics Enthusiast, a Photographer.
About
I'm an Electrical Engineering student at University of California, San Diego (Class of 2027). My expertise spans embedded systems, digital design with Verilog on FPGAs and ASICs, PCB design in KiCad, and programming in C, C++, and Python. I'm passionate about innovative problem-solving and applying engineering principles to real-world challenges.
Experience
Undergraduate Researcher - Electrical Engineering Department, San Jose State University
Jan 2025 - June 2025- Designed Verilog-based RTL circuit to compute Lorenz Attractor equations and visualize output via VGA.
- Deployed the design on an Arty-S7 FPGA board for real-time testing and validation.
- Collaborated with Dr. David Parent to integrate current integrator logic with stochastic multiplier logic developed in prior research project to create more efficient Quadratic Integrate-and-Fire (QIF) neuron model.
Undergraduate Researcher - Project Engineering Success, San Jose State University
Sep 2023 - Dec 2024- Created a program with Dr. David Parent to introduce ASIC design to prospective students with minimal experience.
- Designed a 4-bit Stochastic Multiplier with Wokwi and Verilog and fabricated the schematic with TinyTapeout.
- Verified the ASIC design using a Mixed-Signal Oscilloscope, ensuring expected I/O logic and timing behavior.
- Achieved a design 3.25 times as efficient as typical 4-bit multipliers (225% improvement) in terms of gate count.
Programming Intern - CallHealth, Hyderabad, India
June 2022 - Aug 2022- Created an application with a team of 3 developers to automate medical-record ingestion from labs, achieving a 93.33% reduction in time and a 90% reduction in human labor.
- Learned and applied APIs (Application Programming Interface) and OCR (Optical Character Recognition).
- Used Python, Tesseract, and Google Vision.
Designer/Builder on Electrical Team - Spartan Racing Formula SAE
Sep 2023 - May 2024- Designed and selected the components (display, connectors, buttons, chipset, PCB, etc.) for the dashboard breakout board
- Soldered components onto PCB and tested the board to ensure functionality
- Built a housing and attached dashboard breakout board to rest of the electrical systems
Projects
RetroMP3
OngoingBuilt an ESP32 MP3 player with Bluetooth audio output, a VS1053B decoder, I2S DAC/amp, microSD storage, and an OLED menu, plus a custom breakout PCB designed in KiCad.
AirAmp
Aug 2025Designed and built an LM386-based speaker amplifier, added an ESP32 for Bluetooth audio, and packaged it with a KiCad PCB and 3D-printed enclosure.
To-Go Bot
May 2024Designed and programmed the navigation system for an autonomous delivery robot built by a team of 17 engineers, achieving 80.67% higher accuracy than similarly priced systems.
News Network
Developed a news aggregation Android application with modern UI/UX design. Integrated News API for content sourcing and management.