Professional Experience
Ball Aerospace
Systems Integration & Test Intern (Summer 2021)
During the Summer of 2021 I worked as a Roman Space Telescope Systems Integration & Test Intern with Ball Aerospace in Boulder, Colorado. The Roman Space Telescope will act as follow-on to Hubble and will use it's 100X larger field of view to more quickly survey the universe (see graphic below). As a whole, my summer with Ball furthered my desire to pursue a career in the Aerospace industry and continued to develop my engineering skills. By straddling both the MGSE and SI&T departments, I gained experience working with several different engineering disciplines, from wholistic spacecraft systems to piece-part component development.
In addition to my professional responsibilities at Ball Aerospace, I also took part in their Intern-centric BIRST program. For my team's BIRST project, we developed a small balloon-sat (shown below), which froze a milkshake during ascent and then insulated the dessert upon the balloon's descent back to Earth. Following the launch of Ball's immensely popular aluminum cup, our team also sought to capture an image of the new product during flight, the result of which has been shared on several of Ball's social media accounts.
Colorado Robosub
Mechanical Engineering Lead (2018-Present)
As the Mechanical Engineering Lead for Colorado RoboSub I am responsible for managing the mechanical sub team and coordinating with other non-mechanical team members to efficiently and successfully integrate new hardware onto our sub. Some of my responsibilities currently included:
Setting and managing project timelines
Managing Mechanical Team budget and deciding how to distribute project funding
Mentoring new members on SolidWorks and basic design practices
Openly communicating with the Electrical and Software sub teams
Ordering machinable parts and building relationships with local machinists
In addition to my role as sub team lead, I have continued to design hardware for our two vehicles, including:
Aluminum sheet metal and square bar, clear anodized frame for main vehicle
Water jet PVC frame for creation of a second competition vehicle
Down camera mounting assembly
Burst disk, pneumatic operated torpedo launching assembly
Each year Colorado RoboSub continues to challenge me and build my engineering abilities as our team strives to achieve underwater autonomy and bring the RoboSub championship to Boulder, Colorado. For more information about RoboSub see the links below.
Capella space
Engineering Intern (Summer 2018, 2019)
During my summers at Capella Space Corporation I worked alongside several senior engineers developing the deployable structure for a Synthetic Aperture Radar MicroSat. As a result, I was working with actual flight hardware and designing parts that have already, or are soon to be launched into space. The work I did at Capella Space Corp. was mostly proprietary, and therefore I cannot provided much more information here. However, here is a list of some of my responsibilities while working there:
Designed and structurally analyzed flight hardware for two on-orbit satellites
Ordered flight hardware from OEM catalogs to meet specific design constraints
Performed 0-G offloading of deployable satellite structure
Modeled and performed modal analysis on vibration test fixture
Assisted in the manufacturing and procurement of various flight hardware
ula iNTERN rOCKET LAUNCH
Payload Provider (2017, 2018)
Each year, aerospace conglomerate United Launch Alliance hosts the Intern Rocket Launch Program, which seeks to energize elementary through high school students about the possibilities of STEM. In the summers following my junior and senior year of high school I joined a small team of students who sought to launch payloads on the Future Heavy sport rocket.
My first year with the program, 2017, I joined two friends to design a payload for the launch. After lots of deliberation, we decided to launch a remote controlled, long-range glider. After jettison, I successfully piloted the payload back to the launch site with little to no damage to any of the gliders components.
For our 2018 launch, my team came to together to construct a long-range, two-wheeled amphibious vehicle, as shown below. Unfortunately, this launch was plagued by issues and our payload, along with several others, were destroyed upon jettison from their positions on-board. After the launch, though, we were selected to be on the local nightly news cast!
first robotics
By far the most transformational engineering experience I have had yet, FIRST Robotics is what made me realize that I wanted to be a mechanical engineer. Starting as a freshman, I quickly distinguished myself from my peers and by my sophomore year I was named a Mechanical Captain, and then later a Co-President and Driver. As a result, I was responsible for leading team meetings and a major portion of the mechanical design behind each year's competition robot.
In the years after my graduation from Boulder High I have stayed involved in the FIRST program by continuing to mentor the team. This involves attending meetings and providing students with advice and design tips regarding a wide range of components and subsystems commonly found on FIRST robots.
