Experience

SMART Scholar

Air Force Research Laboratory — AFRL/RVSW

Pursuing research in cislunar autonomous rendezvous, proximity operations, and docking (ARPOD). Developed a novel algorithm for debris detection from a satellite constellation, built a spacecraft modeling and control library in Julia, and designed low-cost cislunar rendezvous trajectories. Work spans data-driven control, astrodynamics, state estimation, and cyber security for space systems.

Researcher

Naval Engineering Education Consortium / Naval Undersea Warfare Center — SD Mines

Environment mapping under information sparsity. Developed metrics for agent exploration performance, benchmarked state estimation algorithms, and created an algorithm for autonomous exploration of unknown cave environments.

Researcher

NASA Ames Research Center — Orbital Dynamics

Investigating the theoretical lifetimes of compact planetary systems analogous to those observed by Kepler and TESS. Developed a multiprocessing N-body simulation pipeline using the Rebound package. Resulted in four conference presentations and forthcoming journal publications.

Graduate Teaching Assistant

South Dakota Mines

TA for Programming for Engineers and Scientists (CSC 115 and CSC 170). Ran help sessions, wrote exam questions, and graded assignments.

Undergraduate Outreach

Department Outreach — South Dakota Mines

Organized department admission events for the EECS Department. Created reinforcement learning control, deep computer vision, and autonomous vehicle demonstrations tailored for general audiences.

Volunteer Summer Intern

South Dakota Mines — Sanford Underground Research Facility (SURF)

Assisted in the development of Radon mitigation systems for SURF. Researched Radon content trapped on materials to reduce exposure to the LUX Dark Matter detector. Participated in clean room work and preparation to transport systems to SURF.

Education

PhD in Aerospace Engineering Sciences

University of Colorado Boulder

MS in Computer Science and Engineering

South Dakota Mines

Thesis: Autonomous Cislunar Rendezvous: Efficient Trajectory Generation and Computation. GPA: 4.00. Advisor: Dr. Alexander Soderlund (AFRL-RVSW).

BS in Mechanical Engineering — Summa Cum Laude

South Dakota Mines

Capstone: Spacecraft Simulation via Omnicopter Dynamics. GPA: 3.92.
Skills & Hobbies
Programming
Python
Julia
C++
MATLAB
C
Tools & Frameworks
Basilisk
Rebound
ROS
PyTorch / Flux.jl
SciML Suite
Awards
Outstanding Senior Award
South Dakota Mines ∙ May 2024
Two-time recipient (2023, 2024).
Senior Design CRADA
Air Force Research Laboratory ∙ September 2023
$5,000 award for the development of a customizable omnicopter and novel control algorithm.
Tau Beta Pi
South Dakota Alpha Chapter ∙ January 2023
National engineering honor society.
DoD SMART Scholarship for Service
Department of Defense ∙ January 2022
~$98,000 award for pursuing a BS in Mechanical Engineering, with a ~$45,000 extension for the MS in Computer Science and Engineering.
Languages
100%
English Native
60%
Spanish Intermediate