Engineering Portfolio

Kalan Brunell

FPGA and embedded systems. Securing avionics data buses at MITRE; leading the battery-management redesign for Tufts Electric Racing.

B.S. Computer Engineering · Tufts University · Class of 2027 Boston, MA · Seeking new-grad roles, May 2027
Projects Experience Email GitHub LinkedIn Resume

01 — About

About.

Headshot of Kalan Brunell

Hi, I'm Kalan.
I'm a fourth-year Computer Engineering student at Tufts University. I enjoy working where hardware meets software, using skills within FPGA design, embedded systems, and hardware security. Currently, I'm designing hardware to secure avionics data buses as a cybersecurity engineering intern at MITRE, and building a custom battery-management board to replace the off-the-shelf modules for the next iteration of our electric race car at Tufts Electric Racing.

Outside of professional and academic work, I enjoy tinkering with personal projects, like custom keyboards, fun homelab setups, and small embedded systems challenges. Otherwise, you'll find me outside on a bike, hiking, or skiing.

02 — Experience

Industry Experience.

Avionics Cybersecurity Intern

MITRE · Resilient Cyber Aerospace Testbed · Bedford, MA

May 2026 — Present

  • Building FPGA IP in SystemVerilog for prototype hardware that adds modern security to real-time data buses.
  • Debugging and verifying RTL with cocotb testbenches, Vivado, and on-chip ILAs on AMD Xilinx FPGAs.
  • Building a companion microcontroller package to dynamically configure the FPGA and run live demos.
Read the full breakdown →

Manufacturing Automation Engineering Intern

Gentex Corporation · Manchester, NH

Summer 2025

  • Developed a 2D computer vision system in Python/OpenCV on a Raspberry Pi 5 for production-line inspection.
  • Designed prototype automation cells: Fanuc robot programming, end-effectors, and vision integration.
  • Built a microcontroller firmware bridge translating Ethernet/IP traffic into discrete I/O for the robot controller.
Read the full breakdown →

03 — Projects

Projects.

Click any project for the full write-up.

High-voltage accumulator installed in the FSAE race car
01 / FSAE

FSAE Accumulator BMS & Embedded Electronics

Leading the electrical and embedded redesign of Tufts Electric Racing's accumulator: replacing off-the-shelf BMS modules with a custom STM32 control board and distributed sensing network, tailored to the pack's safety needs and size, weight, and power targets.

FSAE BMS Embedded Systems In Progress
Read the case study
Simulation waveform from the processor's VHDL testbench
02 / Digital Design

5-Stage Pipelined ARM Processor

A LEGv8-subset ARM processor in VHDL, built from the ground up as a single-cycle datapath, then pipelined into five stages with hazard detection and data forwarding, and verified through waveform analysis.

VHDL Digital Design Code
Read the case study
KiCad routing view of the 65% keyboard PCB: the full key matrix with traces, switch footprints, and the STM32 placed centrally
03 / Hardware

Custom Mechanical Keyboard

A fully custom 65% keyboard: STM32G0B1 PCB designed in KiCad with hot-swap sockets, USB-C, ESD protection, and a diode matrix for N-key rollover.

KiCad STM32 QMK In Progress
Read the case study
MITRE eCTF competition logo
04 / Embedded Security

MITRE Embedded CTF

A two-phase competition: design a cryptographically secure Hardware Security Module in firmware, then attack every other team's. I worked on hardening the PIN-verification path, then spent the attack phase intercepting UART traffic and doing the timing groundwork for a fault-injection attack on that same check. Tufts placed 19th out of a field of roughly 100 teams.

Firmware Hardware Security
Read the case study
Bar chart of NTT per-layer latency, 521 cycles original versus 265 cycles parallelized
05 / Computer Architecture

Post-Quantum Cryptography Acceleration

An ML-KEM-512 FPGA accelerator that ran a key encapsulation 11 times faster in wall-clock time than a simulated out-of-order CPU core, on 13% of the part's LUTs. Then two optimizations, neither of which made it faster.

Vitis HLS FPGA Cryptography Paper
Read the case study
2048 game running on FPGA hardware
06 / FPGA

FPGA 2048

The whole game in VHDL on an iCE40 FPGA, including a custom VGA controller, a tile-ROM graphics pipeline, and an NES controller for input.

VHDL FPGA VGA Code
Read the case study
Autonomous color-following vehicle prototype
07 / Junior Design

Autonomous Color-Following Vehicle

An ATmega-based vehicle that follows a colored line using a custom photodiode array and a PID loop, with a WebSocket link for telemetry between vehicles on the course.

Embedded C++ Hardware
Read the case study
Lakerbots 8046 Charged-Up competition robot
08 / FRC

Competitive Robotics Vision & Control

Two FRC seasons of vision and controls: a real-time targeting pipeline, a field-centric swerve-drive stack, and an IMU balancing routine for the 2023 Charge Station.

Computer Vision Controls FRC
Read the case study
Breadboard bench setup with an STM32 Nucleo-32, an OBD-II I2C adapter, and an SK9822 LED strip on its reel
09 / Embedded

Car RPM Shift Indicator

A 16-LED bar that sweeps green to red with engine RPM and flashes at the shift point, reading live engine data off the car's OBD-II port.

Embedded STM32 OBD-II In Progress
Read the case study
A 10-inch mini rack holding a patch panel, gigabit switch, and the HP EliteDesk Mini that runs the homelab
10 / Infrastructure

Homelab & Self-Hosting

One mini PC at home running my photos, documents, and a few self-built services in Docker, reachable from anywhere over a private network and backed up off-site.

Docker Self-Hosting AI Workflow
Read the case study

04 — Skills

Skills.

Programming
C C++ Python MicroPython ARM Assembly OpenCV
Digital Design & FPGA
VHDL SystemVerilog FPGA Vivado / Vitis HLS GTKWave cocotb
Embedded
STM32 / ARM Cortex-M ATmega RTOS PlatformIO
Buses & Protocols
CAN RS-485 UART / SPI / I2C OBD-II Ethernet/IP Custom Protocol Design
Security
Applied Cryptography Firmware Hardening Fault Injection Research
PCB & Electronics
KiCad Altium Designer LTspice Test & Measurement Instrumentation
Systems & Networking
Linux / Ubuntu Server Docker & Compose Tailscale Caddy restic / Backblaze B2
Engineering Tools
SolidWorks Onshape 3D Printing Fanuc Robot Programming

05 — Education

Education & awards.

Education

B.S. Computer Engineering

Expected May 2027

Tufts University — School of Engineering

GPA: 3.6 / 4.0 · Dean's List

Relevant coursework: Advanced Computer Organization, Digital Logic, Real-Time Embedded Systems, General Embedded Systems, Data Structures, Circuits & Electronics, MITRE Embedded Capture the Flag.

Awards & Recognition

Dean's List

2023 · 2024 · 2025

FRC World Championship Qualifier

2023

Led Lakerbots 8046 to the FIRST Robotics World Championship as Team Captain and Lead Engineer.

Xerox Award for Innovation & Information Technology

2023

06 — Contact

Get in touch.

Email LinkedIn GitHub Resume (PDF) Full portfolio (PDF)