Matthew Rief

Electrical Engineer — Robotics & Embedded Systems

I'm an electrical engineer with a hands-on background in motor control, embedded systems, and power electronics. I'm currently pursuing a part-time M.S. in Robotics and Autonomous Systems at Johns Hopkins University while working full-time as a hardware engineer.

Experience

Hardware Engineer

June 2026 – Present

Scientific Instrumentation Company

Design and validate embedded electronics for scientific and laboratory instrumentation
Work spans motor control, power systems, and embedded firmware

Education

M.S. Robotics and Autonomous Systems

2024 – Present

Johns Hopkins University, Engineering for Professionals (part-time)

B.S. Electrical Engineering

2023

Iowa State University

Projects

Three-Axis Stepper Motor Driver Board

A three-axis stepper driver built around the STM32G491, with closed-loop encoder feedback on each axis.

Diagram of tracing backward from the success flip-flop to a SAT solve that finds the unique input

Reverse-Engineering an ASIC From Its Layout

Recovered a real fabricated chip's netlist from raw GDS polygons, then solved for the one 121-bit input that makes it succeed.

More projects coming soon

Write-ups for the quadcopter electronics stack, UTV autosteer, and others are in progress.