Sidney Neil

B Engineering (Hons) — Electrical & Computer Engineering
AI & Hardware — from embedded silicon to production model

Final-year Electrical & Computer Engineering student at UQ specialising in embedded hardware and applied AI. I've programmed Siemens S7 PLCs on live industrial sites, designed multi-layer PCBs for ARM embedded targets, and built ML pipelines processing real sensor data — including a flood-risk model that outperformed Google's public baseline by 75%. I work across the full stack: silicon to software.

Technical Skills

Controls & Automation
Siemens S7 PLCTIA PortalLadder Logic Function BlocksSCADA HMIRobotic Motion Commissioning
Electrical & Embedded
PCB DesignSTM32ARM Embedded Linux YoctoSignal ProcessingFPGA (Vivado) Power ElectronicsCircuit DesignRF / Microwave
Applied AI & ML
PythonTensorFlowscikit-learn Computer VisionStatistical LearningPandas MATLAB / SimulinkGeospatial AnalysisAzure

Work History

FitMatch Jan 2026 — Present
Co-Founder & Lead Engineer
  • Co-founded with Zac Welsh, leading all technical development from concept through App Store launch — addressing the gap between trainer qualifications and online reach.
  • Built the full-stack iOS platform end-to-end: backend API infrastructure, UX design, and deployment pipeline.
Astute Systems Nov 2025 — Present
Hardware Engineering Intern
  • Designed multi-layer PCBs for embedded hardware products targeting industrial-grade reliability standards.
  • Compiled and customised Yocto Linux builds for embedded ARM targets, optimising boot time and system footprint.
Detron Complete Automations Jun — Nov 2025
Control Systems Engineering Intern
  • Programmed a Siemens S7 PLC via TIA Portal to automate a robotic conveyor arm on a live client project.
  • Configured SCADA HMI screens for real-time process monitoring and operator interaction.
Catalytics Data International Sep 2024 — May 2025
Junior ML Developer
  • Built an automated computer vision pipeline in Python that eliminated manual processing steps from the workflow.
  • Integrated the pipeline into existing data infrastructure, improving throughput and reducing error rates.

Key Projects

🏆 1st Place — International AI Hackathon
Flood Risk Prediction Model

Developed an award-winning geospatial flood-risk model at a UQ × KMITL × Thai National Innovation Agency hackathon in Bangkok. Processed 15 years of Thai government hydrological data — outperforming Google’s forecast baseline by 75%. Thai government expressed interest in continued development.

PythonTensorFlowscikit-learnFlaskPandasAWS
⚡ UQIES Hackathon
Smart Water Infrastructure

Prototyped an IoT smart valve system integrating flow sensors, embedded firmware, and ML-based anomaly detection for real-time water network monitoring.

IoTEmbeddedFirmwareML
📡 Thesis Project
UAV Real-Time Sensor Acquisition

Engineered a hard real-time sensor pipeline with deterministic interrupt handling and a fixed-point FFT for reliable in-flight data acquisition under strict timing constraints.

RTOSFFTSTM32Signal Processing
🎮 Team Project II — 7/7
TPMania — Embedded Multimedia System

Engineered a handheld gaming device on an STM32L4 microcontroller featuring DMA-driven I2S audio playback from SD card, a custom DAC amplifier circuit, OLED display, LED matrix, and arcade-style input.

STM32DMA / I2SDAC DesignEmbedded COLED
🥇 2nd Place — UQ MARS Micromouse
Autonomous Maze-Solving Robot

Placed 2nd competing solo in a team event. Built a maze-solving robot with 3 IR sensors, an MPU6500 IMU, DC motor drive, and implemented a DFS traversal algorithm for autonomous navigation.

ArduinoDFS AlgorithmIMU / GyroscopeIR Sensing
🌏 New Colombo Plan — Dalian, China
AI-Powered Community Platform

Led technical architecture of a React Native prototype during a UQ-funded international exchange at Dalian Neusoft University. Platform recommends projects to users via heuristic AI matching based on engagement patterns.

React NativeAI MatchingCloud Networking

Academic Background

B Engineering (Hons) — Electrical & Computer Engineering
The University of Queensland
Specialisations
Electrical Engineering Computer Engineering Machine Learning
Advanced Coursework
Control Engineering I & II Embedded Systems Design Digital System Design Advanced Embedded Systems Numerical Linear Algebra & Optimisation Microwave Engineering Advanced Power Electronics Algorithms & Data Structures
Expected
Dec 2026