Kevin Abreu

My name is Kevin Alexis Abreu Castellanos. I graduated from the University of Puerto Rico Mayaguez, on December 2015 with a Bachelor's of Science in Electrical Engineering (BSEE). This degree was performed with 2 areas of emphasis, power systems, and later power electronics. Since early childhood, I was exposed to electronics, such as musical amplification, circuits and computers.

This led to interest in the electrical field, and the desire to solve and tacklechallenges of the modern world. Currently, any type of technology involves the complexity of sensors, circuits, programming, and hardware in order to solve customer's needs, either to facilitate daily tasks or reach new horizons of cutting-edge technology. During my academic life, I had the opportunity to perform research at Steven Institute of Research and Technology, in Hoboken, New Jersey. During this summer internship on the year
2013, I had a multidisciplinary group (consisting of another electrical engineer, chemical engineer and topography students) that had the primary goal of registering and interlacing the signature harmonics from different vessels cruising the Hudson River (between New York and New Jersey) for homeland security purposes. Utilizing under water microphone equipment and high definition telescopic cameras, the group was able to make a library of different vessels that contain the third harmonic signature from the vessels' engines by implementing signal processing software and describe the different expected behaviors (based on speed, harmonic amplitude, frequencies, signal to noise ratios) between vessels such as speedboats, tug boats, cruisers among others.

During year 2014 and 2015, I had taken most of my degree's specialty courses in Power Systems. At this point, I applied and worked for a company in Atlanta, Georgia; A Southern Company: Georgia Power. My role as a co-op student consisted of troubleshooting, and repairing/upgrading equipment hardware in the protection system of the power grid, specifically
in the distribution side, in order to improve system reliability and reduce grid downtime; both which increase customer satisfaction based on the quality of the service. This involved replacing smart relays, troubleshooting relay software according to company specifications and regulations, installing voltage regulators in company substations, perform proper circuit switching per analysis
of the power flow of the system among similar responsibilities. From this point forward, I found a professional desire for testing equipment; measuring how it is expected to perform based on data sheets, company implementation, test data and how it
actually performs in the field. Being able to utilize theoretical knowledge and evaluate variances, failures, hardware error and malfunctioning are part of my interests as a professional engineer.

As of February 2016, I am a full time employee of Raytheon in Tucson, Arizona. I am a project test engineer, where I evaluate manufacturing process test equipment, and supervise the test data from production hardware to determine malfunctioning hardware, failing results and variances that exceed the permissible tolerances. Any non compliant hardware is brought
forward to a review board for evaluation with suggestions on how resolve the current issues being discussed with it.

As of future goals, I would like to obtain my Master's Degree in Power Engineering, with an emphasis in Power Electronics in order to further understand the different converter topographies available and how to use these different technologies to increase overall system efficiency. One of my biggest interests is alternative energies and how they can be implemented in power grids, be it distributed generation implementation or wide-scale generation sources that utilize alternative sources such as hydro power, solar, nuclear, wind or similar technologies that have drastically evolved over the years. My main goal is to be able to bring forward to the professional world, ideas and knowledge covered under the vast topic of power electronics, to bring modern products at feasible costs for the customer (either by more efficient designs or streamlined manufacturing processes under different circuit topographies), and increased overall performance.

Be it solar panels, protection relays, modern transformers, switching cubicles or similar devices, I want to innovate within a field that is always moving forward under the current challenges; for protecting the ecosystem or promoting alternatives for the customer.