People > Current Members > Kevin Liu Hermstein

Education

Columbia University (September 2023 – Present)

• M.S./Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering (advised by Prof. Gil Zussman)
  • NDSEG Fellow
  • 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
  • National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) Fellowship
  • 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
• M. S. Hossen et al., “Collection: UAV-Based Wireless Multi-Modal Measurements from AERPAW Autonomous Data Mule (AADM) Challenge in Digital Twin and Real-World Environments,” In IEEE Data Descriptions, vol. 3, pp. 354-366, 2026

Conferences

• C. E. Caicedo Bastidas, J. N. Doshi, M. R. Choudhury, A. K. H. Prabhakara, A. Adhikari, K. Hermstein, A. K. Singh, T. Chen, K. Jamieson, F. Moshary, I. Seskar, D. Raychaudhuri, and G. Zussman, “COSMOS ZMS: A Radio Dynamic Zone Management System using the COSMOS platform,” In Proc. IEEE DySPAN’26, 2026.

Workshops

• C. E. Caicedo Bastidas, J. N. Doshi, M. R. Choudhury, A. K. H. Prabhakara, A. Adhikari, K. Hermstein, A. K. Singh, Y. Li, T. Chen, K. Jamieson, N. Akulov, I. Kadota, F. Moshary, I. Seskar, D. Raychaudhuri, and G. Zussman, “Radio Dynamic Zone Management System for Urban Environments,” In Proc. National Radio Dynamic Zones (NRDZ) Workshop, 2026.
• 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, EECS6892 Reinforcement Learning in Information System, Spring 2026
• 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)