KENNETH THOMAS TABACCHI, M.S.

 

CAREER OBJECTIVE:

To design and code digital audio electronic systems.

 

SUMMARY OF QUALIFICATIONS:

5 years of solid electrical engineering design experience in the electronics industry working in product development.  Technical strength lies in the ability to understand both hardware and software components.  Strong signal processing, DSP hardware/software and computer simulation backgrounds.  Excellent leadership and communication skills.  Extensive international experience in China, Hong Kong, and Japan.  Knowledgeable in Chinese (Mandarin), Japanese and French.

 

COMPUTER LANGUAGES:

Motorola 56k and TI 54xx Assembly, C, Matlab script, Python script, Visual Basic, and slight experience with C and assembly for SHARC floating point DSP’s.

 

OTHER TECHNICAL SKILLS:

Experience as a DJ and sound technician.  Familiar with audio over Ethernet (Cobranet).  Familiar with high-speed communication protocols such as USB, IEEE 488 (GPIB), and RS-485.  Algorithm coding skills for digital audio effects, FIR/IIR digital filters and FFT’s.  Sound Fourier analysis, DSP, and Wavelet theory.  Experience working with pulse width modulators (PWM).

 

WORK EXPERIENCE:

7/2002 – present            Peavey Electronics Corp.                                           Meridian, Mississippi

                                    DIGITAL DESIGN ENGINEER

·         Designed hardware around a DSP for a digital effects processor and tuner to be used in guitar amplifiers.

·         Designed hardware for a digital effects processor to be used in mixers.

·         Coded reverbs and other audio effects in assembly for above hardware.

 

5/2001 – 8/2001             New Eagle Software                                                    Dearborn, Michigan

Contracted to Motorola Automotive Electronics Group

SUMMER INTERN

·         Developed an automated test and data collection system for electronic control modules by integrating dSPACE and other hardware and writing communication and executor software in C++ and Python script. 

 

8/1998 – 1/2001             ANR Pipeline Company                                             Detroit, Michigan

ELECTRICAL ENGINEER

·         Designed a data acquisition system to be used for emissions testing, along with GUI software for control.

·         Streamlined and updated an equipment information management system, resulting in higher productivity for field engineers.

·         Developed calculation and predictive maintenance software in Visual Basic.

·         Integrated data from all three above applications into one large, relational database.

·         Provided on-site support for software applications.

 

1/1997 – 7/1998             LDJ Electronics, Inc.                                                 Troy, Michigan

                                    ELECTRICAL ENGINEER

·         Team leader in the design of a magnetic material measurement system. 

·         Designed analog circuitry, including filters.

·         Performed system integration and installation in Japan.

·         Implemented a real-time motion control system for a semi-conductor pick and place system using a Motorola 68000 embedded platform.

·         Coded signal processing analysis software for Windows in Visual Basic.

·         Used simulation tools to design analog and digital hardware.

 

EDUCATION:           

9/1999 - 4/2002             University of Michigan                                               Ann Arbor, Michigan    

M.S.E. in Electrical Engineering Systems – Signal Processing

Research:      

·         Designed a reverberation algorithm to create a stereo effect from a mono signal.  Wrote tightly packed assembly code for the Motorola 56303 DSP to implement this algorithm.  Also coded Dattorro’s plate reverberator into the 56303 DSP.

·         Developed and simulated a voice identification system using a Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficient feature extractor with a vector quantized decision model based on the LBG algorithm.  Examined the performance vs. efficiency tradeoff for various parameters of the system in different levels of zero mean Gaussian white noise.  Compared the performance of the above system with a Linear Predictive Coefficient voice identifier.

·         Designed Wavelet filter banks and a digital noise suppression system for data acquisition.  Simulated the design in Matlab.

·         Spent a semester studying abroad in Hong Kong.  Studied Chinese Politics, Chinese Society, and Trade and Investment in China.

 

9/1992 - 4/1997             Oakland University                                                    Rochester, Michigan     

B.S.E. in Electrical Engineering (Cum Laude graduate)

Awards:                      

While an undergraduate, received a research grant in un-manned vehicles.  Led a team of students in the above research project.  Awarded for academic excellence among student athletes.  Member of a national championship-swimming program.  Member of Tau Beta Pi and Eta Kappa Nu.

 

OTHER ACTIVITIES:

I worked nights as a DJ and sound tech while earning a masters degree.  I am an avid martial artist including training in Aikido, Tae Kwon Do and Kung Fu.  I also enjoy playing guitar, windsurfing, sailing, and watching gangster movies.