Organizations

GNC

I have been a member of Georgia Tech’s Guidance Navigation and Controls club since my first week of college in August 2023. Since then, I have been an involved member, working first on structures, designing a launch pad as part of our freshman team, then designing and manufacturing the nose cone of our gimballed rocket that year, Vector. Also in my freshman year I contributed to several research papers and reports on our rockets and their efficacy, which were published and presented at that year’s AIAA conference. A launch report of the gimballed rocket can be found here, and an analysis of a static firing of our jet vane-controlled rocket can be seen here .

After coming back from my semester studying abroad in my sophomore spring, I joined the aerodynamics and modelling team, quickly gaining proficiency in Ansys Fluent. Working with this team at the same time as I was taking aerodynamics in school was especially exciting, as I got to blend my increasing CFD knowledge with my growing understanding of the fundamentals of how fluids move in situations relevant to the club work I was doing.

Finally, in the fall of 2025, I returned to our structures team, where I was intimately involved in the design of a new motor gimballing system. This process was not only extremely educational for me, but also very satisfying. To see our design come to fruition through all stages of the design process brought me joy, and made me far more confident in my own abilities as an engineer. Starting with a basic design, then iterating on it week over week, constantly thinking about how to improve our design and make it better for the systems which contain it educated me in both mechanical and systems engineering fundamentals. Additionally, the design reviews, both of my systems and when I got to review my peers’, showcased that such reviews were one of the most essential items in a product development cycle, and that they were an excellent way for older engineer’s knowledge to be passed down to the rest of the team.

I was also introduced to the tools of FEA, or Finite Element Analysis. Using Ansys Workbench and Mechanical, we rigorously tested the weak points of our system to see if the design was valid.

In preparation for the spring 2025 semester, I am excited to begin gaining experience in machining the needed parts for our system. I cannot wait to see our mission critical system be integrated into our rocket and validated. More news to come.

AIAA

My membership of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics has been valuable over my three years in college so far. Not only has it afforded me the opportunity to publish multiple technical papers to its journals, but it has also connected me with mentors and peers who have and will continue to advance my career.