May 2019 marked the beginning of my career at Intel, which was as an intern working on pre-silicon hardware validation. This internship led into a second internship the following summer, and finally my current full time job with Intel once I graduated with my master's degree. While I had no prior experience with pre-silicon validation, I was able to quickly learn and master the skills this job requires to succeed. My main job at Intel is to work with my colleagues to create tests and run simulations against the model the design team created, in order to catch any bugs before the design is eventually produced in silicon. This of course requires the programming skills to create tests and checkers in SystemVerilog, but being able to efficiently diagnose failures through error signatures, log file outputs, and waveforms is also vital to complete my work. Communication skills are also useful as due to the complexity of modern computer chips, I often need to communicate with teams and individuals I have never worked with in order to address issues. My immediate team often are able to help when I run into issues or otherwise become blocked though, as we use the Scrum methodology for planning our tasks to ensure we can complete all of our work in a timely manner.

Much of my work at Intel revolves around writing and debugging tests, which has led to me being able to quickly identify and solve issues in code. I often need to come up with interesting test cases to see if the processor design acts the way we expect it to, and if not, helping to figure out why. Usually debugging a failure involves understanding the failure signature, searching through log files to determine when and how the program diverged from expected behavior, and viewing waveforms of signals' values throughout a simulation. While almost all of my work is done in SystemVerilog and simulations, the testing and debugging skills I have gained extend to other languages as well. Even in programs written in languages besides SystemVerilog I have become adept at noticing edge cases which may cause code to fail, and when failures happen unexpectedly, quickly reasoning through why.

日本語は少し話せます！ Very different from the other skills listed on this page, but I can speak and write basic Japanese. Michigan did not have a language requirement for engineering students, so I was originally glad that I could take more engineering classes instead. But that changed when I decided to apply for a study abroad trip in Japan, at which point I began taking Japanese lessons at the beginning of my sophomore year of college. I ended up being accepted to the study abroad program which took place during summer 2018, and on top of that I enjoyed my Japanese classes so much that I continued taking them throughout my entire time at the University of Michigan. After these classes I am capable of holding simple conversations in Japanese, but I hope to continue practicing and someday be fluent enough to talk with native speakers without trouble.