Sugiarto Wibowo

Fulbright Scholar · Rice University · Houston, TX

Sugiarto Wibowo

Embedded systems engineer, from prototype to production.

I'm a Fulbright Scholar from Indonesia, pursuing a Master's in Electrical and Computer Engineering at Rice University. Before Rice, I spent close to three years at Polytron writing firmware for a digital rice cooker and prototyping IoT connectivity.

Today I work on Houdini, a software-defined radio platform at Rice's Wireless Lab, and I'm building Sally, a wearable for maternal mental health, as my capstone. Away from the bench, I'm usually on a trail, camera in hand (I've visited 15 U.S. national parks so far), or dialing in a pour-over.

MECE — Rice University Embedded Linux Wearable Devices Embedded Firmware
View Experience GitHub ↗
Sugiarto Wibowo
Zion National Park Based in Houston, TX

01 — About

Background

I'm a graduate student at Rice University, pursuing a Master's in Electrical and Computer Engineering on a Fulbright Scholarship. My work sits at the intersection of RF hardware, FPGA prototyping, and embedded Linux systems.

I currently work as an Embedded Software Engineer on the Houdini Project at Rice's Wireless Lab, building a software-defined radio platform on the RFSoC 4x2 — from a custom PLL kernel driver to the power sequencing design of an amplifier board for 10 GHz transmission.

Before Rice, I spent close to three years as an Embedded Software Engineer at Polytron, Indonesia's largest electronics manufacturer, writing firmware for consumer appliances and prototyping with IoT connectivity standards such as Matter and OpenThread.

Outside of engineering, I've hiked through 15 U.S. national parks so far, with a road trip through the Pacific Northwest, California, and southwest. I document the trips on YouTube, and spend a fair amount of time perfecting pour-over coffee.

Embedded Software

  • C/C++, Python
  • Linux kernel modules
  • FreeRTOS, Zephyr RTOS
  • Driver development

RF & Hardware

  • RFSoC / FPGA (Vivado, PetaLinux)
  • PCB design (Altium, 4-layer)
  • Power sequencing & safety design
  • Frequency & logic analyzers

IoT & Connectivity

  • BLE, Wi-Fi, OpenThread
  • Matter IoT framework
  • MQTT, cellular (4G)

Wearables & UI

  • 3D design & enclosures
  • LVGL embedded UI
  • Flutter mobile apps
  • Low-power design

02 — Experience

Work History

May 2026 — Present

Embedded Software Engineer, Houdini SDR Project

Rice University, Wireless Lab (summer internship, then research course) · Houston, TX

Started as a summer internship (May to Jul 2026) and continuing as a research course through December 2026 on Houdini, an NSF-funded, open-access, multi-band (CBRS, X-band, Ku-band, V-band) software-defined radio platform for networking, sensing, and imaging research, built on the Xilinx/AMD RFSoC 4x2.

  • Created a Linux kernel driver that controls the PLL on the up/down converter board over SPI
  • Made the FPGA driver based on a Vivado peripheral design, and verified the setup can transmit and receive 10 GHz with the up/down converter
  • Contributed to the Altium PCB design of a power amplifier board with a power sequencer, supervisory chips and multiple power supplies, used to transmit 10 GHz wirelessly
  • Goal of the project: multiband support for radio communication
  • This semester: building an application on top of the Houdini platform as a research course

Aug 2022 — Apr 2025

Embedded Software Engineer

Polytron · Indonesia

  • Wrote the firmware for a digital rice cooker as a state machine with interrupts and a tick loop, using ADC with DMA to read the NTC temperature sensors. Tested it on prototype units that cooked six different foods that were fully cooked and ready to eat
  • Researched Matter and OpenThread on my own, then built a three-device prototype: a light on OpenThread, an AC monitor on Wi-Fi that talks to the STM32G0 AC controller over UART, and a bridge between Wi-Fi and OpenThread (ESP32 for wireless). Supervised an intern on the project and introduced both topics in a sharing session
  • Built a wireless test/logging tool for rice cooker and refrigerator data over serial and Bluetooth
  • Built an internal test display for refrigerator data on a TFT screen using the LVGL graphics framework
  • Delivered internal MicroPython training

Jul 2021 — Dec 2021

R&D Engineer Intern

Unicode · Indonesia

  • Built a GPS vehicle tracking system reporting driver location over 4G to a geofencing server
  • Converted a manual attendance system into automatic Bluetooth-based detection using the Room Assistant framework
  • Implemented YOLO gesture recognition on an SBC for camera-based human-computer interaction

Sep 2019 — 2022

Electronics Laboratory Assistant

Petra Christian University

  • Supervised practicums in digital electronics, microprocessors, machine vision, and robotics
  • Developed an FPGA learning module (Xilinx PYNQ-Z2) covering I/O and PWM generation
  • Built a training module for collaborative robots sorting objects via industrial camera

03 — Selected Work

Projects

Embedded · Wearable · Edge ML

SALLY: Wearable for Maternal Mental Health

Capstone: a privacy-first necklace that passively tracks vocal stress markers, with all processing on a local edge server.

Embedded · Robotics

Autonomous Lane Keeping Car

Vision-based lane detection and control for autonomous vehicle navigation.

Embedded · IoT

Assistive Robot in Low-Visibility Conditions

Sensor-driven navigation assistance for degraded-visibility environments.

FPGA · Digital Design

Systolic Array Matrix Multiplier on FPGA

4x4 systolic array in Vitis Model Composer, a CUDA study, an HLS accelerator on a Zynq board, and a 4x4 QR decomposition accelerator comparing two architectures (ELEC 522).

Signal Processing · Sensing · TinyML

Intelligent Mobile Systems (ELEC 537)

STFT from scratch, step detection, acoustic ranging with clock drift correction, and YOLO quantization and pruning on a Raspberry Pi.

Embedded · IoT

Customizing MicroPython Firmware

Internal C modules and frozen module customization for embedded MicroPython builds.

Embedded · IoT

ALZO: Outdoor Patient Tracking

IoT tracking system for Alzheimer's patients outside the home — published in TELKOMNIKA.

Embedded · IoT

GPS Tracking System for Motorcycles

Cellular-connected GPS tracking with server-side geofencing.

AI · Embedded

Sign Language Detection (YOLOv5)

Real-time hand symbol classification for human-computer interaction — published in COMMIT.

Embedded · IoT

Wireless Employee Attendance

Automatic Bluetooth-based attendance detection across distributed SBC stations.

Embedded · IoT

CoFight — COVID-19 Wristband

Wearable IoT device for oxygen and heart rate monitoring during the pandemic.

Embedded

FPGA with PYNQ-Z2

Teaching lab modules for FPGA I/O, PWM generation, and digital logic fundamentals.

Robotics · Computer Vision

Collaborative Robot for Item Sorting

Universal Robots arm with industrial camera vision for automated sorting on a conveyor.

Embedded · USB · Personal

USB Game Controller

STM32G070 firmware that reads two knob joysticks and several buttons and reports them as a USB HID device, so it acts like a commercial controller. Uses ST's USB middleware. Built for fun.

More work archive ↗

04 — Education

Academics

MECE, Electrical & Computer Engineering

2025 — 2027

Rice University · Fulbright Scholar

Specializing in computer engineering, with a focus on wearable devices and embedded systems. Current GPA: 3.94/4.0.

B.Eng. Electrical Engineering

2018 — 2022

Petra Christian University · Surabaya, Indonesia

Focus in robotics and electronics. Dean's List, GPA 3.86.

  • Ministry of Education (Indonesia) funded project — multi-story building evacuation system for earthquakes
  • 2nd place, International Electrical Engineering Competition — wearable COVID-19 patient monitor
  • Head of Research & Development, HIMATEKTRA student organization

High School, Natural Science

Karangturi National High School, Semarang, Indonesia — 2018

Google Project Management

Coursera specialization, funded by Indonesia's Ministry of Communication and Information Technology

05 — Record

Publications & Patents

Publications

  • —Hand Symbol Classification for Human-Computer Interaction Using the Fifth Version of YOLO Object Detection — PDF
  • —ALZO: An Outdoor Alzheimer's Patient Tracking System Using Internet of Things — PDF

Patents (Indonesia DJIP)

  • —Alat Pemantau Aktivitas Pasien Demensia di Luar Rumah — DJIP
  • —Metode pada Perangkat Elektronik untuk Memantau Aktivitas Orang Dengan Demensia di Luar Rumah — DJIP
  • —Sistem Automasi Bangunan Berbasis IoT dan AI untuk Evakuasi Korban Gempa — DJIP

Certifications