Research
Reaction design and process optimization — most recently converting cellulose-derived sugars into biofuel precursors through a three-stage catalytic pathway.
Open to Opportunities
Kavern
Sinaga
Researcher · Engineer · Developer
I move between the lab bench, the PCB, and the terminal — running catalytic reactions, extracting metals, building the instruments that measure them, writing the numerical methods that make sense of the data, and integrating it all into one system.
4+
Open Source Repos
4
Research Projects
3
STEM Disciplines
About Me
Science, code,
Science, code,
and everything in between.
I'm a STEM researcher and engineer from Indonesia with a drive to understand systems at their deepest level — whether that's the catalytic chemistry of cellulose conversion, the extraction of aluminium, the fluid dynamics of a falling sphere, or the runtime behaviour of firmware.
Under Duodecane, my independent research lab, I design, build, and validate real scientific instruments from the ground up — including a custom portable digital viscometer and a fume hood. If I can build it from first principles, I will.
Technical Toolkit
C / C++
Assembly
Metallurgy
Chemistry
Cybersecurity
Systems engineering
Autodesk Fusion
CFD & FEA
Embedded Systems
Integrated Systems
Numerical Methods
Fluid Mechanics
Biochemistry
Data Analysis
Scientific Writing
What I Do
Areas of Expertise
Embedded Systems
End-to-end hardware engineering — Custom firmware, precision sensor interfacing, custom circuits, and measurement systems backed by rigorously optimized numerical models.
Software Development
Clean, production-ready code in C/C++ — from microcontroller firmware and mathematical algorithms to game tooling and analytical data pipelines.
Physics & Mathematics
Applied mechanics, viscometry, mathematics libraries, automatic differentiation, and ODE solvers written in C++ to turn physical models into usable answers.
CAD & Simulation
Full design-to-fabrication workflows in Autodesk Fusion, with CFD and FEA validation of airflow and structural behaviour before any physical build.
Data & Research
Quantitative methods, statistical modelling, scientific writing, and economic analysis — bridging laboratory findings to industrial projections.
Featured Research
Cellulose, reconsidered as fuel.
A year-long study into converting food-waste cellulose into 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) — a precursor to high-octane biofuel — and whether the process could realistically scale.
- Period
- Jul 2025 – Mar 2026
- With
- SMA Saint John's Catholic School
Reaction pathway
01
Hydrolysis
Acid-catalyzed breakdown of cellulose into glucose.
02
Isomerization & Dehydration
Organometallic complex-catalyzed conversion to HMF in a biphasic system.
03
Hydrogenation
Raney nickel-catalyzed reduction of HMF into DMF biofuel.
The standout result: an n-butanol/water extraction system that out-performed conventional solvents by chemically stabilizing HMF in the organic phase — projecting DMF production costs as low as $2.37/kg with recyclable catalysts.
Selected Work
View All
Featured Projects
Hardware · Physics
Portable Laser Falling Ball Viscometer
Custom Arduino-based digital viscometer with laser-photodetector timing, eliminating manual stopwatch error. Implements two viscosity models: Stokes steady-state and a full ODE — to measure the viscosity of nata de coco fluid.
Arduino
Embedded C
Fluid Mechanics
Equipment · Physics
Low-cost Fumehood
Custom laboratory fume extractor equiped with activated carbon filter tested with sucrose/ammonium nitrate fuel and CFD simulations.
CFD
Design
Physical Testing
Selected Repositories
A few things built along the way.
C++ · Numerical Methods
CODE — ODE Solver
A piecewise collocation solver for first-order ODEs, utilizing dual-number automatic differentiation and Gegenbauer polynomials.
View source (opens GitHub in a new tab)C++ · Header Library
Mathematics
A lightweight header-only library implementing several mathematics concepts — the building blocks the ODE solver uses for automatic differentiation.
View source (opens GitHub in a new tab)C / C++ · Systems
EmbeddedExecutable
A systems-level exploration of manual PE mapping — loading and running a Windows executable directly from an in-memory byte array, with no copy ever touching disk.
View source (opens GitHub in a new tab)C / C++ · Systems
HiddenExecutable
Further exploration of manual PE mapping — loading and running a Windows executable directly from an in-memory byte array, with no copy ever touching disk, and minimal visibility to evade detection.
View source (opens GitHub in a new tab)C / C++ · REVERSE ENGINEERING
InfiniteCS2
Research endeavour into Windows internals, reverse engineering, and low-level game engine analysis; gaining a practical understanding of how modern game engines manage memory, how internal DLL injection operates at a low level within a live process, and how anticheat systems identify and respond to such techniques.
View source (opens GitHub in a new tab)C++ · HEADER LIBRARY
LargeIntV2
A dynamically allocated arbitrary-precision integer library for C/C++ — storing arbitrarily large integers entirely on the heap with 4-bit-per-digit memory efficiency, as a single header file designed for scientific and data projects.
View source (opens GitHub in a new tab)Let's Build Something Together
Open to research collaborations, engineering roles, internships, and consulting engagements across metallurgy, chemistry, embedded systems, integrated systems, cybersecurity, systems engineering, and software development.