1 Mehul Tikekar

Mehul Tikekar Senior Undergraduate Permanent Address Department of Electrical Engineering F-6, Nutan Sandesh, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay Plot No. 19-20, Garodia Nagar, India Ghatkopar (E), Mumbai – 400077, mehultikekar@iitb.ac.in Maharashtra, India. Education

Year Degree / Certificate Institute / Board Performance 2006 – present B.Tech in Electrical Engineering IIT Bombay 9.84 / 10

(after 7 semesters) 2006 High School Certificate

(Class 12) Maharashtra State Board 91.83%

2004 Secondary School Certificate (Class 10)

Maharashtra State Board 92.26%

Academic Achievements

Gold medalist at the 37th International Physics Olympiad held at Singapore in July 2006. Ranked 25th amongst the participants from all nations and had the best score amongst the Indian team.

Ranked 2nd in the entire institute (out of 600 students) Ranked 1st in Electrical Engineering Department (out of 84 students) Awarded an AP grade (for outstanding performance) in 7 courses Ranked 44th in the IIT Joint Entrance Examination 2006 (out of 300,000 students) Among the top 30 students selected in the Indian National Chemistry Olympiad

Awards and Scholarships

Awarded the National Talent Search scholarship in 2004. This award is given to 1000 students all over India Awarded the Gold Medal at the Homi Bhabha Young Scientist Examination held by Greater Bombay Science

Teachers Association in 2003. Eight other 9th class students from Mumbai were given this award. Awarded the IITB Heritage Fund Scholarship for 2007

Publications

Masood Qazi, Mehul Tikekar, Lara Dolecek, Devavrat Shah, and Anantha Chandrakasan, “ Loop Flattening & Spherical Sampling: Highly Efficient Model Reduction Techniques for SRAM Yield Analysis”, to be presented in Design, Automation and Test in Europe conference, March 2010.

Major Projects Statistical timing analysis and tools (Summer internship, Summer 2009)

Guides: Prof. Anantha Chandrakasan and Masood Qazi, Digital Integrated Circuits and Systems Group, Massachusetts Institure of Technology Developed an efficient Monte Carlo algorithm for evaluating the effect of process variation on timing delay and failure probabilities in SRAM circuits.

CMOS instrumentation amplifier for biomedical applications (B.Tech project, ongoing) Guide: Prof. Maryam Shojaei Baghini, IIT Bombay Designing a low power and low noise amplifier for amplifying common bio-potentials like ECG. This involves circuit design and layout in a CMOS process technology.

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Grid-connected photovoltaic systems (B.Tech seminar, Spring 2009) Guide: Prof. Vivek Agarwal, IIT Bombay Performed a literature survey of the various inverters used for photovoltaic applications. In particular, the evolution of inverter topologies over the last 30 years and the changing standards for connecting inverters to the power grid were studied.

“Smart Glove”controlled toy car (Electronics Design Lab, Spring 2009) Guide: Prof. Dipankar, IIT Bombay Designed and made a toy car that can be wirelessly controlled using hand-gestures that are sensed by a wearable “smart glove”. The glove uses an accelerometer to sense the tilt of the hand and accordingly control the speed and direction of the toy car. Later, a computer interface with capabilities to recognize more advanced gestures was developed.

Theoretical efficiency of solar cells (UROP, Spring 2008) Guide: Prof. Chetan Singh Solanki, Energy Systems Engineering, IIT Bombay Studied various factors affecting the efficiency of solar cells from the "solar-cell model" perspective and also a thermodynamic point of view. The results from both methods were compared and the differences explained. This work was done under the Undergraduate Research Opportunity Programme (UROP) in IIT Bombay.

Digitally controlled voltage regulator (Digital Circuits Lab, Spring 2008) Guides: Prof. Sachin Patkar and Prof. Rajbabu, IIT Bombay Designed and built a buck converter whose output voltage is regulated using only digital components such as ADC, timers and counters, adder-subtractor ICs. A simple control loop which increments or decrements the duty-cycle by a single step at a time was used and proved to work. The circuit was given a special mention for its originality, complexity and sophistication.

Single-sensor speed determination system (NIUS, Winter 2007 and Summer 2008) Guide: Prof. Rajesh Khaparde, HBCSE, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research Designed and built the electronics for a speed determination instrument having a single optical intensity sensor. A high-speed analog-to-digital converter was interfaced to a microcontroller and the result displayed on an LCD display. This project was undertaken as part of the National Initiative for Undergraduate Science (NIUS) in HBCSE, TIFR.

Student Satellite Programme (Dec 2007 – present) A member of the satellite team consisting of 33 undergraduates at IIT Bombay.The project is being mentored by the Aerospace Department, IIT Bombay and ISRO Satellite Centre, Bangalore. It involves making a small satellite (< 10kg weight) which will study the electron distribution in the ionosphere. I am part of the Power System group and work on power harvesting, storing and distribution process. Currently, a proof-of-concept circuit for the power system is ready and fabrication of the flight model is under way.

Extra-curricular Activities

Shaastra 2007: Came 4th in the “Capture the Flag” competition in Shaastra, the technical festival of IIT Madras. It involved a team of an autonomous robot and a manually controlled machine. The manual machine was used to capture the opponent’s “flag” while the autonomous robot had to detect an intrusion by the opponent’s machine into your space.

Techfest 2009: Won the 2nd position in the “Micromouse” competition in Techfest, the technical festival of IIT Bombay. The micromouse is an autonomous robot which must navigate its way through a maze and find the shortest path to its centre.

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Techfest 2007: Won the 8th position in the robotics competition “Void” in Techfest, the technical festival of IIT Bombay. The robot had to be manually controlled to pick up balls from one region and deposit them in a pit on the other side of a ditch.

Was awarded the Institute Colour for extra-curricular Technical activities in the year 2007- 2008. The award is given every year to 6 students throughout the institute.

Rotating LED display: An array of LEDs was mounted on a rotating beam and made to blink in a specific sequence using a microcontroller, so as to create an illusion of it displaying an animation clip.

Student Design Challenge by American Society of Mechanical Engineers: Made a portable water-still to be powered only by human effort. The motivation for this problem statement was natural disasters like floods and hurricanes where water, though available in plenty, is not drinkable.

Software Proficiency

Programming languages: C/C++, basic knowledge of Verilog Microcontrollers: Atmel AVR, Texas Instruments MSP430, Microchip PIC CAD packages: Cadence,HSPICE, EAGLE, LTspice, MATLAB

Positions held

Convener of the Electronics Club of IIT Bombay for the year 2008 – 2009. With a co-student, I have organized six 2-hour practical workshops and two lectures on basic electronics.

Contingent Leader for IIT Bombay’s contingent of 35 students to Shaastra 2007, the technical festival of IIT Madras.

Core team member of TechniC, the Technical Club of IIT Bombay, which organized several technical events in 2007 – 2008.

Coordinator for Techfest 2008, the technical festival of IIT Bombay. Helped organize a competition called VCC (Voice Controlled Circuit) based on speech recognition.