People > Current Members > Kevin Liu Hermstein

Education

Columbia University (September 2023 – Present)

• M.S./Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering (advised by Prof. Gil Zussman)
  • Evergreen Fellow
  • M.S. Received on Feb. 2025 – 4.18/4.00 GPA

University of Maryland, College Park (August 2019 – May 2023)

• B.S. in Electrical Engineering, cum laude – 3.96 GPA

Awards & Honors

• Columbia
  • Third Place: AERPAW Autonomous Data Mule Student Competition
  • Edwin Howard Armstrong Memorial Award (2025)
  • Columbia University Evergreen Fellowship (2023)
• UMD
  • Tau Beta Pi (2021-2023)
  • Dean’s List (2019-2023)
  • Presidential Scholarship (2019-2023)
  • AFCEA Cyber Studies Merit Scholarship (2019-2023)
  • Jean and Everett Dillard Scholarship (2022)
  • George Corcoran Memorial Scholarship (2021)

Publications

Journals

• A. Pocher, S. Wang, K. Hermstein, B.L. Beaudoin, D.T. Abell, T.M. Antonsen Jr., I. Haber, P.G. O’Shea, “Investigating Beam Dynamics with Measurement-Driven Initialization”, Physics of Plasmas 1 Oct. 2025; 32 (10): 103106

Workshops

• K. Hermstein, A. Kwak, M. Kohli, G. Zussman. 2025. “Real-Time RF Canceler Tuning in Practical Full-Duplex Radios”, in Proc. WiNTECH ’25, Hong Kong, Nov. 2025

Posters and Demos

• A. Kwak, K. Hermstein, “Full-Duplex Self-Interference Cancellation Control Algorithm”, Data Science Day, Data Science Institute at Columbia University, New York, NY, Apr. 2025
• P. Maddala, J. Kolodziejski, A. Adhikari, K. Hermstein, D. Chen, L. Zhu, T. Chen, I. Seskar, and G. Zussman, “Demo: Experimentation with Mobile 28 GHz Phased Array Antenna Modules”, in Proc. ACM MobiCom’24, Washington D.C., Nov. 2024
• A. Adhikari, K. Hermstein, Y. Wu, T. Legbandt, C. C. Bastidas, T. Chen, F. Moshary, I. Seskar, and G. Zussman, “28 GHz Phased Array Interference Measurements and Modeling for a NOAA Microwave Radiometer in Manhattan”, in Proc. ACM MobiCom’24, Washington D.C., Nov. 2024
• P. Maddala, J. Kolodziejski, A. Adhikari, K. Hermstein, D. Chen, L. Zhu, T. Chen, I. Seskar, and G. Zussman, “Experimentation with Mobile 28 GHz Phased Array Antenna Modules”, NSF Midscale Experimental Research Infrastructure Forum (MERIF), Kansas City, MO, Sept. 2024
• A. Adhikari, K. Hermstein, D. Chen, M. Kohli, J. Kolodziejski, F. Moshary, C. C. Bastida, T. Chen, I. Seskar, and G. Zussman, “Spectrum Sharing via Consumption Models: Prototyping and Field Testing in an Urban FCC Innovation Zone”, Data Science Day, Data Science Institute at Columbia University, New York, NY, Apr. 2024

Outreach & Education

• COSMOS Toolkit lesson at Energy Tech High School (November 2023)
• Volunteer, Girl’s Science Day (November 2023)
• COSMOS Toolkit lesson at Dreamyard Preparatory School (October 2023)

Work Experience

Software Engineer Intern at Raytheon AST (June – August 2023)

• Developed stages of a preprocessing pipeline for a blind waveform identification ML model.
• Adapted algorithms in Python for filtering, mixing, and resampling to detect center frequency and baud rate of a signal given real valued samples.
• Wrote bash scripts to test the performance of the model and pipeline on over 9000 signal snapshots.

Software Engineer Intern at Raytheon AST (June – August 2022)

• Created a dynamic HTML web page to control RF switches from remote locations.
• Web page could toggle inputs, check for errors on the switches, display command history, and toggle settings of the Python backend.
• Hosted the webpage on a virtual machine configured to automatically start the web server on startup.
• Added support for cross polarity, special diversity signals to a software-based multi-threaded demodulation product in C++.

Software Engineer at Raytheon AST (June – August 2021)

• Developed scripts in Python to streamline DevOps. Script interfaced with Npm, Docker and Github repositories, as well as Jenkins.
• Wrote MySql scripts to initialize a MySql database and handle the removal and addition of data
• Documented approach to MySql database and functionality of scripts.

Embedded Software Intern at AST Space Mobile (January– May 2021)

• Developed flight software for satellites using C++ on an STM32 processor in the Keil and Cube IDE.
• Debugged hardware, like CAN busses and transceivers, with oscilloscopes and logic analyzers.
• Utilized Gitlab and Git submodules for version control and Jira to track tasks.

Software Engineer Intern at Raytheon AST (June – August 2020)

• Documented a detailed approach to extract metadata and raw text from Office Suite and PDF files.
• Developed library in C++ to handle the extraction of metadata and raw text from Office Suite documents and PDF documents using a pointer to the file in memory and a length of data.
• Presented and demoed feature to multiple teams and department managers.

Research Experience

Undergraduate Research Assistant, UMD Institute for Research in Electronics and Applied Physics (August 2022 – August 2023)

• University of Maryland, College Park Institute for Research in Electronics and Applied Physics
• Computational investigation into the prediction and quality of space charge dominated electron beams.
• Supported the Bright Beams Collective, a world-class research facility in beam and accelerator physics at the Institute for Research in Electronics and Applied Physics.
• Wrote Python scripts utilizing Warp, a particle-in-cell package, to simulate high energy electron beams.
• PI: Patrick O’Shea, Ph.D. Mentor: Liam Pocher, Ph.D. Candidate

ACES Honeypot Project, UMD (August – December 2020)

• Performed a categorical and quantitative examination of honeypot attacker characteristics on a public network.
• Wrote Bash scripts to monitor connections made to honeypots, save files from the honeypots, log activity on the honeypots, and recycle the honeypots after a certain amount of time or when the connection closes.
• Utilized crontab to automate the backing up of logs and honeypot files.
• Confirmed other studies performed on similar networks with our data.

Teaching Experience

Teaching Assistant

• Columbia University, EEOR4650, Convex Optimization of Electrical Engineering, Fall 2025
  • Delivered recitation “Convex Optimization in Full-Duplex Radios”
• Columbia University, ELEN6761 Computer Communication Networks, Fall 2024
• Columbia University, ELEN1201 Intro to Electrical Engineering, Spring 2024
• Columbia University, ELEN1201 Intro to Electrical Engineering, Fall 2023

Undergraduate Teaching Fellow

• University of Maryland, ENEE140 Intro to Programming for Engineers, Fall 2021
• University of Maryland, ENEE140 Intro to Programming for Engineers, Fall 2022
• University of Maryland, ENEE140 Intro to Programming for Engineers, Spring 2023

ECE Department Tutor

• University of Maryland, Spring 2022

Mentorship

• M.S. Students
  • Junyu Hu, May 2025 – Dec. 2025
  • Amelia Kwak, Tesla Scholar, M.S. Research Award, Sept. 2024 – May 2025 (Now at BAE Systems)
• Undergraduate Students
  • Liao Zhu, University of Iowa, Amazon SURE Program, Summer 2024 (Now at Samsara)
• High School Students
  • David Chen, Stuyvesant High School, Summer 2024 (Now EE at Yale)