Who am I?
I recently graduated Georgia Tech with a BS in Aerospace Engineering. I like running, hiking, and biking. I love engineering and the thrill of creating new things, and I’ve worked on many pretty cool projects.
Interests & Hobbies
I started running a couple years ago and I’ve come to love it. Going out for a run calms me down and sets me up for a productive today and tomorrow. I’m pretty competitive, so often I’ll end up running to my endurance limit, which usually isn’t great for short-term productivity but seems to be beneficial long-term. I’ve not yet run a full marathon (my longest run was about 15 miles a few weeks ago) but one of my goals for this summer is to do just that.
I also enjoy biking and hiking, but haven’t been doing much of either since last summer (2020). I’ve summited two Colorado 14ers (Longs Peak, Mount Elbert) and several shorter Colorado peaks (eg Green Mountain, Twin Sisters). I did Longs Peak in 8 hours solo last summer, here’s a GPS recording!
On top of Longs, looking North
I also enjoy tracking hurricanes and follow a blog called Eye on the Storm (at yaleclimateconnections.org). For me, it can be thrilling to try and predict what a storm will do in real time; the rapid intensification of storms is still incredibly difficult to predict, for both humans and computer models.
In the last year or two, I’ve gotten into the FPV drone hobby. I’ve built and flown a few drones so far, but I’m not a pro by any means. It’s certainly harder to fly an FPV drone than it looks.
And, last but certainly not least, I’m a designer and a maker. I like taking on unreasonably large projects and parsing them down into do-able chunks. I like 3D printing small trinkets for myself and others. I like spending hours on CAD software designing random things that I never end up actually making.
Engineering Story
In high school, I joined FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) Team 1619, Up-A-Creek Robotics. I ended up devoting huge chunks of time to the team and found my love for engineering there. I learned a lot about mechanical design and SolidWorks CAD, and became the mechanical team lead in my senior year. The team reached the “Einstein” championship matches for the first time in its history in my last year.
Toward the end of my senior year, I became obsessed in designing some form of amphibious drone. I had a few ideas and went through several iterations and revisions of CAD. In order to develop my ideas further, I brought a few friends together and took the Create-X I2P (Idea to Prototype) class as a first-year student at Georgia Tech. The prototype was never fully completed, but the end result was decently impressive for a few college freshmen: a sweeping carbon fiber frame, some droopy (not exactly structurally sound) retractable wings, and a full CAD assembly. I know now how naïve I was to expect I could actually pull it off, but I did learn a lot from the experience.
In my time at Georgia Tech, I’ve experimented and tried to keep my options open. My first year, I spent my entire Spring break cutting and flaring steel tubes, making spacers, and drilling holes for the Yellow Jack Space Program’s (YJSP) first liquid rocket engine feed system testing. When I first joined the club, I was too overconfident and messed up a lot as a result. I had smaller-scale mechanical design experience, but I hadn’t really dealt with high pressures, structural load engineering, or machining. As such, I often designed parts with low load limits and without robustness. I also got into some dangerous habits when I started machining. I gained many skills during my time at YJSP – basic machining, plumbing, electronics CAD. The most valuable skill I gained, though, was taking things slow and always asking questions, no matter how stupid they might seem, when learning something new.
I became more involved in Georgia Tech’s Spaceport America Cup (SAC) team toward the latter half of my first year and my second year. I helped build the 2019 rocket and competed with the team as part of the 2019 SAC competition. Later, I helped design, test, and build the 2020 rocket’s mechanical staging system. Unfortunately, COVID meant that the 2020 SAC competition was cancelled, so we couldn’t fly the rocket that year.
This past year, I’ve focused back on individual projects. In the summer and fall of 2020, as I was taking remote classes, I bought my first actual tools, registered as a member of “TinkerMill” (my hometown’s makerspace), and prototyped a dynamic home insulation system and a rotating+sliding solar panel awning. This past semester, I took the Idea to Prototype class again, this time to develop a modular drone platform (ModDrone), and applied for and was accepted to the Create-X Startup Launch program. I received 2nd place at the Create-X I2P showcase. This past summer, I’ve worked on ModDrone full-time with a friend as part of the Startup Launch program, developing the product and company (see mod-drone.com for more details). Through the program, I learned about business management as well as pitching myself and my idea in a compelling manner. Unfortunately, due to a lack of investment during Startup Launch demo day, I’ve decided to put this project on hold for now.