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Subhi Abo Rdan is a final-year Physics and Computer Science student at MIT and a Jusoor Open Call scholar. Last summer, he interned at Apple's headquarters in Cupertino as a Silicon Prototyping Engineering intern.
The Apple Internship
From May to August 2025, Subhi worked on FPGA engineering within Apple's silicon prototyping pipeline. The work was technical and specific.
He built a non-invasive distributed clock monitoring system for multi-board FPGA setups, enabling real-time frequency measurement and verification of external clocks through a register-mapped interface. He engineered a cycle-accurate FPGA validation engine using RTL waveform replays to emulate the broader system, which made high-throughput device-under-test (DUT) validation possible. He also designed a software and hardware execution pipeline to parse and compress complex engineering data, achieving a compression ratio of roughly 220 times, significantly reducing the time needed to run hardware validation cycles.
Subhi grew up in Syria, where he was a member of the national Physics Olympiad team and competed internationally, earning bronze medals at the International Physics Olympiad in 2020 and 2021 and the European Physics Olympiad in both years. He has since become a coach to younger students on the Syrian team.
When MIT admitted him, the university provided a scholarship covering tuition. The costs of living, travel, and supporting his family were a separate challenge. His father had died during the war, and Subhi had been working alongside his studies to support his family since middle school. Jusoor's support covered those remaining expenses, which he says allowed him to pursue his dreams and studies, while supporting his family at the same time.
Looking Ahead
Subhi is set to graduate in 2026. His specialization in FPGA systems and hardware validation, combined with hands-on experience inside Apple's silicon pipeline, puts him in a strong position for whatever comes next.
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