The complete Book, as a scrolling story.
Chapter One · 2019
A place I did not know yet.
I arrived in Ann Arbor from Vietnam in 2019, knowing few people. Michigan was a place to study before it became the place where much of my life took shape.
Courses became projects. Projects became teams. The unfamiliar city acquired familiar faces, and eventually the feeling of home.
There was no plan that connected every chapter in advance. The path grew from what I was learning.
More about BaoChapter Two · 2022
Start with what is real.
My early research at Peterson Lab involved semiconductor thin films: depositing metal contacts, annealing samples, and studying their electrical behavior.
Materials science became a practical discipline. Prepare a sample. Take a measurement. Change a condition. Look again.
An explanation needs to survive contact with the thing it describes.
The research recordChapter Three · 2023
Every improvement asks for something.
Circuit design made constraints tangible. Lower power, greater gain, faster operation and less area could not all be independent wishes.
The projects ran from amplifiers and arithmetic circuits to voltage references and hardware security; one asked whether device variation could become a dependable chip identity. That December I completed my B.S. in Materials Science and Engineering, with an Electrical Engineering minor, Summa Cum Laude.
The most interesting part was often the limit that refused to go away.
Variation as identityChapter Four · 2024
Eventually, someone has to sign off.
At Faraday Technology Vietnam, the work had a fabrication deadline. My part was chip-level test and timing for ASIC shuttle projects, including UMC 22nm: insertion, simulation, tester patterns and sign-off.
I helped bring one shuttle project to tape-out within 1.5 months. The pace made coordination concrete. A detail mattered when it arrived in a form the next person could use.
The design mattered. So did the handoff.
The Faraday chapterChapter Five · 2024–25
What happens beyond the lab?
From July 2024 to November 2025, in the Wireless Integrated Circuits and Systems Group with Prof. David Wentzloff, I worked on low-power circuits for a totally implantable auditory prosthesis: sensor interfaces, amplifiers, active-RC filters and MEMS/ASIC interfaces in TSMC 65nm.
The circuit questions were demanding. Increasingly, I wanted to understand the path beyond them: how a device would be made, used, adopted and supported.
That curiosity became a reason to explore commercialization.
The research chapterChapter Six · 2024–26
The frame gets wider.
At miLEAD, I combined primary research, commercial analysis and project management for three pre-clinical biotech startups. A recommendation had to account for customers, competitors, pricing and what an early team could actually do.
An attractive technology did not, by itself, identify the market it should enter. Our market-entry and pivot recommendations went directly to leadership teams.
The work was turning evidence into a position someone could act on.
The consulting chapterChapter Seven · 2025–26
Make the recommendation clear.
Competitions compressed the whole process: form a team, choose a direction, build a case, and explain it before time ran out.
As Technical Architect for ARTiculate, a drawing-led product concept, our team earned Track Winner and Audience Choice at the Ross +Tech Innovation Jam. I also led semifinalist teams at MHCC and the Southeast Case Competition.
The lasting practice was deciding what an audience needed to understand first.
ARTiculate and the teamChapter Eight · Beyond the work
A place becomes people.
I co-founded the Vietnamese International Student Association because a new place is easier to enter when a community is ready to welcome you. I wanted the next students from Vietnam to have a better start.
As a Graduate Student Instructor for EECS 215, I lectured, held office hours and helped develop laboratory materials for a course serving more than 400 students. Being correct was a starting point; an explanation also had to connect.
The photographs from these years are full of other people. That feels like an honest account of how a place became home.
The community chapterChapter Nine · 2026
The work happened among people.
I completed my M.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering, focused on Integrated Circuits and VLSI, in April 2026.
The technical development happened inside a community: researchers, mentors, classmates and collaborators. Research, advanced VLSI, teaching and community shaped the chapter together.
The stadium photograph holds this chapter better than a credential alone could.
The graduate research chapterChapter Ten · 2026—
Begin with one conversation.
Most of a life goes undocumented. The milestones usually survive; the everyday slips away quietly, because nobody thought to ask.
A Story calls someone you love, listens, and follows up the way someone who knows them would. What they say becomes a private archive the whole family can add to. As Co-founder and COO, my focus is product strategy, operations and pilot development.
Not a memoir to finish. A Story to keep, and to carry on.
Explore A StoryChapter Eleven · Beyond the work
A little distance helps.
Skiing in the Wasatch Mountains. Time above Devil’s Lake. A poker table with friends in Las Vegas.
Not every good day needs to produce something. These moments give the work a different perspective.
They keep the years from becoming only a list of projects.
Outside the formal recordChapter Twelve · Still being written
There is more to figure out.
My interest is in ambitious products, difficult technology, and the strategy that turns one into the other.
The next chapter does not need to look like the last one. It does need to be worth doing.
If you are working on something that needs both technical and commercial judgment, I would be glad to hear about it.
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