Grad Profile

From stargazing to aerospace engineering

Jeff Zehnder — Thu, 08 Oct 2026 16:01:40 +0000

From stargazing to aerospace engineering Jeff Zehnder Thu, 10/08/2026 - 10:01

Name: Marah Azzam
Program: Aerospace Bachelor's-Accelerated Master's Student

My name is Marah Azzam, I grew up in Nazareth, the holy land. As you might imagine it is a beautiful place full of rich history, people and tourists who are interested in the region. However, I was always looking up to the sky admiring the universe rather than the land.

This admiration became tangible, when an astrophysicist came to my fifth grade class and opened my eyes to the beauty of the stars, planets and galaxies, and the human mind that allows us to design and innovate systems that enable us to explore those wonders of the universe.

From that point on it was clear to me that designing spacecraft for space exploration is my dream, therefore I needed to pursue aerospace engineering.

Fast forward seven years: I am in twelfth grade and I know I want to study aerospace engineering, the question is where. I started researching my options, and realized how advanced the USA is in higher education especially in the aerospace field.

Therefore, I decided to leave the holy land, and head to the land of the free. The only thing left is to decide what colleges to apply to.

The research began again. I laid out my options based on my preferences, the acceptance rates, and the deadlines for each (little did I know I was doing a trade study). Naturally, �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder was my top choice, since it offers an outstanding curriculum for aerospace full of hands-on experiences, research opportunities, and the vast number of astronauts who graduated from �鶹��Ѱ��obviously pushed the university to the top of my list.

The dream is finally on its right path, I got into �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder to pursue my bachelors degree in aerospace engineering. During those years, I gained significant technical knowledge in my field, built a versatile network around me full of professors who I worked with in teaching as a facilitator, in research as an assistant and from my classes.

Additionally I made life long friends who inspire me and push me to do my greatest. This safe, encouraging, intelligent environment that �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder offers is not found anywhere else, and it allowed my love for aerospace to grow bigger each day, that I decided to stay and pursue a master’s degree in aerospace engineering.

I got into the master’s program as a BAM student (Bachelor’s - Accelerated Master’s) with a focus in Bioastronautics and completing a certificate in satellite system design. Right now, I am in my first year of full graduate courses, taking graduate projects and working with sponsors who directly produce the spacecraft I dreamed about in my fifth grade class.

Little me didn't realize that I would reach this point, but here I am still looking up, still admiring space, but with knowledge and achievements that �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder allowed me to do.

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Making my aerospace dreams a reality

Jeff Zehnder — Mon, 28 Sep 2026 20:54:45 +0000

Making my aerospace dreams a reality Jeff Zehnder Mon, 09/28/2026 - 14:54

Name: Dakota Kelly
Program: Aerospace Bachelor's-Accelerated Master's Student

My hometown is Wilton, Connecticut, but I lived in Los Angeles until I was 11, which is where I first gained an interest in aerospace engineering.

When I was 8 years old living in LA, it was all over the news that the Space Shuttle Endeavour would be retiring to the California Science Center. It blew my mind that something that had been to space was now roaming through the streets I grew up on making its 12 mile final journey from LAX to the California Science Center.

After seeing the space shuttle in the museum, my love for space was solidified. From that very moment, I wanted to be an astronaut and that’s what I’ve wanted to be ever since!

Throughout my schooling, math and science were always my strongest subjects which reassured me that I wanted to go into engineering when it came time to apply to colleges.

I was also able to get my Private Pilot’s License in high school after discovering my passion for aviation when I heard many astronauts had their pilot’s license. This passion for aviation in addition to human spaceflight reassured me that aerospace engineering was the right path, as I was previously also considering mechanical engineering.

Throughout my undergrad, I was able to join numerous bioastronautics related research projects which lead me to pursue an MS in Aerospace Engineering with a focus in Bioastronautics. I am a student in the Bachelor's-Accelerated Master's program so I was able to have 6 credits count from my undergrad towards my master’s.

I am currently taking off a semester from school as I’m interning at NASA in Houston, TX on their space suit testing team. I plan to return to �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder to continue my master’s in the spring.

I decided to come to �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder specifically for their highly ranked aerospace program. I also knew �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder was a top-tier research program and the #1 public university for NASA research funding. I also thought it was very unique that they offered a Space Minor. It also didn’t hurt that the campus is gorgeous and there’s plenty of skiing nearby!

I love �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder so much that I decided to stay for my master’s too! I think one of the greatest parts about �鶹��Ѱ��is how much the professors want you to get hands-on research experience. They have so many research opportunities that allow you to discover your specific passion. The friends I’ve made along the way are also friends I know I will have for life so I am very grateful to �鶹��Ѱ��for that!

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Advancing GPS from undergrad to a PhD

Jeff Zehnder — Wed, 23 Sep 2026 19:17:42 +0000

Advancing GPS from undergrad to a PhD Jeff Zehnder Wed, 09/23/2026 - 13:17

Benon Gattis at Jammertest, an annual Norwegian conference for testing the robustness of global navigation satellite systems, like GPS.

Name: Benon Gattis
Advisor: Dennis Akos
Lab: Radio Frequency & Satellite Navigation Laboratory
Program: Aerospace PhD Student

Benon Gattis is researching radio frequency jamming and spoofing by military and independent actors to disrupt GPS and other global navigation satellite systems. The research aims to quickly detect and locate the source of such transmissions to mitigate their impacts.

I grew up in Gunnison, a small town in western Colorado. I grew up biking and skiing in nearby Crested Butte, and ended up developing a passion for these outdoor activities.

I knew I wanted to go to college somewhere that would support these sports while also providing an enriching academic experience. This led me to a fairly short list of schools, of which �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder was the best fit for me.

I wanted to pursue engineering and development, but I had a hard time deciding between the various engineering majors; electrical, software, and mechanical.

Aerospace ended up being a combination of all those areas, giving me exposure to all of them in my undergraduate at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder. This also allowed me to then pursue the focus area I liked most for my masters. One of the selling points of an undergraduate at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder for me was the ability to get a BS and MS in 5 years with the Bachelor's Accelerated Masters (BAM) program.

In my undergrad I participated in the DLA program, a program designed to give undergraduates experience working in various labs around CU. My internship was in Dennis Akos’s lab studying GPS interference and jamming.

I didn't originally plan on staying for PhD, but I really enjoyed the research and lab and wanted to keep going.

One of my highlights of my time at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder is that I now get to mentor people in this same DLA program that I was once a part of. I am now in my third year of my PhD, after finishing my BS and MS.

Through my time at �鶹��Ѱ��and in Boulder I have come to appreciate both the city and the school. Boulder has allowed my outdoor passions to thrive and has an amazing athletic community. I think that is my favorite part about �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder, is that the school and town together create an amazing and supportive environment to get a graduate degree.

Benon Gattis is researching radio frequency jamming and spoofing by military and independent actors to disrupt GPS and other global navigation satellite systems. The research aims to...

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PhD student advancing the science of Ice Giant planets at hypersonic speed

Jeff Zehnder — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 16:10:30 +0000

PhD student advancing the science of Ice Giant planets at hypersonic speed Jeff Zehnder Tue, 09/01/2026 - 10:10

Leszcz speaking at the 2025 Smead Symposium.

Jeff Zehnder

Cate Leszcz gazes into her computer screen, analyzing complex mathematical formulas as she seeks to learn secrets of planets over a billion miles from Earth.

The ice giants Uranus and Neptune orbit at the far reaches of our solar system. Leszcz, an aerospace PhD student and Smead Scholar, is conducting computational fluid dynamics research to better understand their atmospheric conditions. This knowledge will be critical for future space probes to the planets.

“Their atmospheres are very different from other planets. We don’t even know their exact composition, which causes all sorts of uncertainties in computational modeling,” Leszcz said.

Here On Earth

A native of Cleveland, Ohio, Leszcz’s path to engineering and space research has been years in the making. She was drawn to science and math from an early age, and in high school, took part in a job shadowing program at NASA Glenn Research Center, located only a few miles from her home.

That led to a college major in aerospace at Ohio State University. Her classroom and lab experiences along with an in-depth summer internship that brought her back to NASA Glenn nurtured an interest in research.

“I did an undergraduate thesis on hypersonics and just loved doing research. I wanted to continue,” she said.

Undergrad to PhD

Leszcz decided a PhD was the next step.

She explored programs and was drawn to �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder for its concentration of hypersonics research. The ample outdoor opportunities in the Rocky Mountains were also a perk.

“The weather is always so nice here so I love being outside, and I have always loved being active as well. Living in Colorado has led me to pursue new activities like skiing, biking, and running and I just did my first half Ironman,” Leszcz said.

She is equally driven on campus, and in 2024 was awarded a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Program Fellowship to further support her work.

“Being a PhD student is the coolest job ever. It’s about the process of figuring things out, designing a research problem yourself, developing the skills to solve it, and then adding fundamental knowledge,” Leszcz said.

Planetary Mysteries

When it comes to that fundamental knowledge, there is much to learn about Uranus and Neptune. The two planets have been visited exactly once, in brief flybys from the Voyager 2 space probe more than 35 years ago. In comparison, the gas giants Jupiter and Saturn have been the subject of years-long orbital exploration missions.

Uranus may be on a path for closer study. The most recent National Academies of Science Decadal Survey for Planetary Science and Astrobiology recommended it as a top candidate for the next NASA flagship mission.

Leszcz speaking at the 2025 Smead Symposium.

Any eventual probe will be traveling at hypersonic speeds, more than five times the speed of sound. The atmospheric turbulence that results from such velocities causes the surface of vehicles to heat up to thousands of degrees.

Improving our understanding of Uranus’s atmosphere now would ease future mission design and operation to endure that turbulence.

“We want to design a heat shield that will protect the vehicle upon its entry but isn’t too thick that it requires more fuel and drives up the cost of the mission,” Leszcz said.

Computational Analysis

Studying the possibilities is extremely complex work, requiring supercomputers like �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder’s Alpine and Blanca systems.

“"I'll disturb certain parameters in my simulations and look at quantities of interest, like the heating a hypersonic vehicle will experience. These are huge sensitivity analyses, running thousands of cases at once,” Leszcz said.

Her research is advancing. Over the summer, she gave public presentations at both the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Aviation Forum and the International Planetary Probe Workshop (IPPW). Later this month, she will speak at a European Space Agency conference in Italy.

“This topic is really cool and there’s so much to study,” she said. “Initially in grad school you’re learning things that are already known, so you can eventually go further. I’m at the point now where I’m starting to discover things that are new and truly pushing the boundaries of our knowledge. That’s really cool.”

Cate Leszcz gazes into her computer screen, analyzing complex mathematical formulas as she seeks to learn secrets of planets over a billion miles from Earth. The ice giants Uranus and Neptune orbit at the far...

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PhD student advancing medical research for life on Earth and in space

Jeff Zehnder — Tue, 15 Jul 2025 14:27:42 +0000

PhD student advancing medical research for life on Earth and in space Jeff Zehnder Tue, 07/15/2025 - 08:27

Jeff Zehnder

Callie Wynn standing by the bioastronautics
tilt translation sled.

Callie Wynn is studying medical ailments for astronauts that also have implications for millions of people here on Earth.

A second-year aerospace PhD student at the �鶹��Ѱ��, Wynn is a recipient of a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship.

The program provides three years of funding toward her PhD as well as professional development opportunities. The honor is a major achievement for any student, but especially so for Wynn, who did not originally see herself pursuing an advanced degree in aerospace.

“This wasn’t the plan,” Wynn said. “My undergrad was in kinesiology and I was going into physical therapy school, but I did some job shadowing and realized it wasn’t for me.”

She started pursuing old interests and joined an aerospace club at her undergraduate alma mater: Texas A&M University. It opened a doorway that changed her future.

“I found out about bioastronautics and in that moment realized, ‘This is it.’ It had the medical background I already had and the spaceflight applications that made me excited to get up and go to work,” she said.

She enrolled at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder for a PhD and quickly became part of a project on Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS), a fainting disorder that affects over one million people in the United States. Astronauts returning to Earth also suffer from similar physiological challenges.

“I’ve been able to do quite a bit of research with human subjects,” Wynn said. “POTS is related to blood flow in the body. The orthostatic intolerance people experience is similar to what astronauts go through when they come back to Earth. They’re having problems with their cardiovascular system.”

Wynn hopes to build on that research through exploration of another ailment called Spaceflight-Associated Neuro-Ocular Syndrome (SANS). It is a condition that causes vision changes in microgravity due to fluid shifts in the body. It affects 70 percent of astronauts.

“While we want to understand what happens with intracranial pressure in space, we just don’t have the ability to do so directly. I’m looking for countermeasures to mitigate this fluid shift,” Wynn said.

SANS is specific to astronauts, but the research has potential applications for conditions here on Earth that involve fluid buildup in the brain, a situation that impacts Wynn personally.

“Seven years ago, I was diagnosed with Idiopathic Intracranial Hypertension; an excess of spinal fluid build up in my brain. It puts pressure on the eyes and can lead to vision loss. Realizing how similar my condition is to SANS was a motivator for my research. I’m able to sit in research meetings and know what it’s like to have an intracranial monitor or a lumbar puncture,” Wynn said.

From the outside, (this research) can look like magic, but as you learn it, it’s not magic. It’s science, technology, and engineering.”

Smead Aerospace has been engaged in SANS research previously as part of the 2024 Polaris Dawn mission, where crewmembers wore special contact lenses that monitored intraocular pressure. That flight was just under five days. Wynn hopes to extend the research on future low Earth orbit missions to build a better understanding of SANS for longer duration flights, like to Mars.

“If we are sending people to planetary surfaces, to Mars, that transit time becomes much longer. You’re going to have more deconditioning of the brain, of the eyes. What amount of vision loss is expected and is okay? We need to develop better models and new ways to treat the condition,” Wynn said.

As she conducts research and advances her education as a PhD student, Wynn is excited at the potential for a future career and contributions to human spaceflight.

“These are projects I want to be on because I believe in this research so strongly,” Wynn said. “From the outside, it can look like magic, but as you learn it, it’s not magic. It’s science, technology, and engineering.”

Callie Wynn is studying medical ailments for astronauts that also have implications for millions of people here on Earth. A second-year aerospace PhD student at the...

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Enhancing orbital safety with better space weather predictions

Jeff Zehnder — Thu, 10 Jul 2025 19:55:23 +0000

Enhancing orbital safety with better space weather predictions Jeff Zehnder Thu, 07/10/2025 - 13:55

Jeff Zehnder

Header Image: Anant Telikicherla in a clean room holding the instrument next to a sounding rocket body.
Above: Telikicherla enjoying the great outdoors.

Anant Telikicherla is developing new instrumentation for an upcoming sub-orbital rocket flight.

Surrounded by racks of electronics equipment, tools, and pieces of an aluminum rocket body – the laboratory could be mistaken for a mad scientist’s lair – Telikicherla is working on an instrument he hopes can help provide advance warnings for solar flares.

“These flares are one of the most powerful explosions in the solar system,” said Telikicherla, a PhD student in the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at the �鶹��Ѱ��. “Flares release an insane amount of energy that can reach Earth in eight minutes and large eruptive flares are often associated with energetic particle events that are a radiation risk to astronauts and can be really damaging to satellites.”

As a student, Telikicherla is co-advised by two leading researchers, Tom Woods, a senior research scientist at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, and Bob Marshall, an associate professor in aerospace.

Flare prediction is an active area of research around the world, and Telikicherla is hopeful the instrument he and Woods have been developing could eventually provide 10-15 minutes advance warning of flares. It is a short period of time, but any additional notice would be beneficial for space weather operations.

The basis of the instrument, called the Solar Extreme Ultraviolet Spectrograph and High Energy Imager (SEUSHI), derives from a paper Telikicherla published on solar flare onsets in The Astrophysical Journal. SEUSHI is slated to fly next spring aboard a sounding rocket.

Sounding rockets are sub-orbital flights that soar to the edge of space and offer engineers and scientists an opportunity to conduct short duration experiments for a much lower cost than those on full size rockets.

“Our group tries to build new instruments to better understand the sun, and hopefully this flight demonstrates the technology and then we’ll propose it as a long-term project aboard a future small satellite,” Telikicherla said.

A native of Dehli in India, Telikicherla has been fascinated by space since a young age. He earned his bachelor’s at the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology, a university run by India’s national space agency, and then worked at the Indian Space Research Organization’s Human Spaceflight Center for two years.

The desire for advanced research drew him back to school.

“My work was fun, but I had a longing to do more fundamental research, to go beyond what a normal industry job does,” he said.

He earned a master’s at the University of Alberta. There, he worked on a different sounding rocket instrument and earned first prize at the AIAA SmallSat conference student paper competition for a submission based on his master’s thesis.

Telikicherla wearing a clean room "bunny suit."

For his PhD, Telikicherla was drawn to �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder, where he had already spent time at as an undergrad in a summer exchange program called INSPIRE.

A collaboration with the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP), INSPIRE offers students from around the world the chance to come to Boulder to design and build a small satellite. It was where he was first introduced to Woods’ research.

“He was the PI on one of the satellite’s instruments and as we were building it, I realized I was more interested in the instrument than the larger spacecraft. That sounded more exciting, making new measurements of things no one has ever looked at before,” Telikicherla said “I told him I wanted to analyze the solar data after it launched and he said absolutely, even though I didn’t have a solar physics background.”

Now a year into his PhD program, Telikicherla splits his time on campus between the lab and conducting observational analysis of existing solar flare data.

“I can download data in real-time from satellites using LASP’s downlink and that’s awesome,” Telikicherla said. “Then, let’s say I get bored staring at my computer for hours, I can go work in the lab instead. I get to do both, and I feel that’s very enjoyable from a PhD student life point of view.”

SEUSHI is scheduled to launch aboard LASP’s EVE Rocket Program in April 2026 from White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.

Anant Telikicherla is developing new instrumentation for an upcoming sub-orbital rocket flight. Surrounded by racks of electronics equipment, tools, and...

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PhD student recognized as 20 Twenties Honoree

Jeff Zehnder — Thu, 13 Feb 2025 04:03:06 +0000

PhD student recognized as 20 Twenties Honoree Jeff Zehnder Wed, 02/12/2025 - 21:03

Jeff Zehnder

In space you can’t stop to ask for directions.

Kristen Ahner is advancing the science of autonomous space exploration.

An aerospace PhD student at the �鶹��Ѱ��, Ahner is being recognized as a 2025 20 Twenties Winner by Aviation Week. The publication honors leading engineering students worldwide who are on course to “shape the future of the aerospace and defense industry.”

“It feels great,” Ahner said. “I was excited to be recognized and join a cohort of people doing impressive things who are all around my age.”

Autonomous Guidance

Ahner’s PhD research is focused on improving autonomous guidance techniques for spacecraft so they arrive at their destinations on time and efficiently. In deep space exploration, even the tiniest of navigation errors can push a satellite radically off course. In an environment where the distance between Point A and Point B is measured in the hundreds of thousands or even millions of miles, that can create major problems.

“Some of the uncertainty comes from thrust performance errors. We try to test engines in vacuums on Earth but there are always errors associated with that,” Ahner said. “Also, when we model spacecraft moving in space we often use simplified models – traveling between the Earth and the Moon we’ll assume the satellite is only orbiting Earth, but the Moon is pulling too.”

In engineering parlance, Ahner is working to advance the state of the art by combining high-fidelity uncertainty propagation techniques with nonlinear chance constraints for spacecraft control in cislunar space and planetary exploration environments.

Ahner at a future professors workshop held at Georgia Tech last year.

“I want to guide spacecraft more effectively. Computers on spacecraft aren’t smart enough to account for 300 different bodies that are exerting gravitational forces, so how can we develop better algorithms to make our corrections more accurate under simplified dynamical models,” she said.

Bachelor's to PhD

Her enthusiasm for these deep space challenges is palpable, but Ahner did not originally set out to study space or even to earn a PhD.

She grew up in a military family, primarily in Ohio, listening to the sounds of fighter jets taking off from nearby Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Ahner envisioned her career would be on the aeronautics side of aerospace. A college internship at Boeing through the Brooke Owens Fellowship shifted her focus.

“I was working in space modeling and simulation. It was the same kind of analysis and math that I really liked, but had more unknowns than aviation. Space is the last frontier and I find that exciting,” she said.

Academic Future

The Boeing internship was in Colorado Springs, but it is not what brought her back to Colorado for graduate school. As an undergraduate at Princeton, Ahner was required to complete a thesis, and two names kept popping up on the papers she was reading: �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder’s Jay McMahon and Dan Scheeres. Today, they are her PhD co-advisors.

Her goal now is to become a university professor herself.

“I had this heavy research load in my final year of undergrad. Initially I was scared of it. There’s uncertainty in doing a research project that may not work out, but I really enjoyed it. The more I learn the less intimidating it seems,” Ahner said.

Both of Ahner’s parents are extremely proud of her accomplishments. Her father is a fellow PhD graduate – earning his degrees in mechanical and systems engineering and teaching as an active duty member of the Army at West Point.

“My Dad loves talking to me about the intricacies of my research,” Ahner said. “It can be intense when we start talking shop. My Mom is my biggest cheerleader – she tells the whole world when I win an award, and she found the 20 Twenties announcement before it had even been officially released. I wouldn’t be where I am today without their support.”

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From DIY drones in high school to advancing drone science as a PhD student

Jeff Zehnder — Thu, 02 Jan 2025 19:45:55 +0000

From DIY drones in high school to advancing drone science as a PhD student Jeff Zehnder Thu, 01/02/2025 - 12:45

Jeff Zehnder

Above: Céu Gómez-Faulk holding a RAAVEN drone.
Header Image: Céu Gómez-Faulk, center right, looking up at a RAAVEN drone during a deployment.

Céu Gómez-Faulk is standing outside a gas station in rural Oklahoma waiting for a sound most people hope to never hear: tornado sirens.

The clouds above are an otherworldly shade of green – a signal that supercell thunderstorms that spawn tornadoes may be in the area.

An aerospace PhD student at the �鶹��Ѱ��, Gómez-Faulk is part of a multi-university team of students and faculty working to improve human understanding and predictions of tornadic storms by pursuing them with fixed-wing drones and weather-sensing equipment.

“It’s awe-inspiring,” Gómez-Faulk said. “There’s so much energy involved in these processes, and they’re so unpredictable. It’s frightening but also inspiring.”

Gómez-Faulk has been interested in drones from a young age. In high school, he competed in drone racing tournaments when quad-copters were still new and largely out of reach for consumers.

So he constructed his own.

“We were building these aircraft out of RC plane parts,” Gómez-Faulk said. “The control systems to design quad-copters weren’t really available to the hobbyist market yet.”

He was captivated by the components he was dissecting and wanted to know more. The child of academics – both of his parents have worked as college professors – Gómez-Faulk started reading research papers, leading him to apply at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder.

“I loved airplanes and everything about them. I always knew I wanted to do aeronautical engineering. Looking around on the internet I found the Research and Engineering Center for Unmanned Vehicles and specifically Professor Eric Frew,” Gómez-Faulk said.

When he arrived in Boulder as a freshman, he sought out the RECUV lab and convinced them to hire him as a student employee within his first month on campus.

“I didn’t really give them a choice, but I couldn’t tell you why they hired me,” he said.

Lab Manager Michael Rhodes has the answer.

“To have gone on his own in high school and looked up research papers, that’s unusual,” Rhodes said. “But really, it was his enthusiasm. He had flying experience, but at the undergrad level, it’s not what you’ve done. It’s enthusiasm that matters.”

Madison Ritsch, Céu Gómez-Faulk, and Michael Rhodes working on a RAAVEN drone during a deployment in Tornado Alley.

Gómez-Faulk worked as an active contributor to the lab and in 2023 was able to join in field storm research, as the team fanned out across Tornado Alley.

“We’re using uncrewed aerial systems and autonomy to improve our understanding of the atmosphere. Doing field campaigns is what sets �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder apart. We have to take our algorithms into the field and see how they perform. It makes the work feel very important. It is not abstract,” Gómez-Faulk said.

After completing his bachelor’s degree, Gómez-Faulk wanted to have a more active role in designing research, and decided to continue on to a PhD, with Frew and Professor Brian Argrow serving as his co-advisors.

“Research and development explores new frontiers, and I wanted to have more of a guiding hand. As an undergrad, you’re doing lower-level work. I wanted to be part of the bigger picture, what is being targeted and why. It led me pretty naturally to the doctoral program,” he said.

Now in his second year as a grad student, Gómez-Faulk is working to advance the autonomous flight algorithms that allow �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder’s systems to navigate in extreme weather conditions. It is challenging work that requires advanced engineering skills.

“I see myself as a career scientist, and we’re working toward better wind sensing,” Gómez-Faulk said. “This is the way to get there. It’s very tangible and it really matters.”

Céu Gómez-Faulk is standing outside a gas station in rural Oklahoma waiting for a sound most people hope to never hear: tornado sirens. The clouds above are an otherworldly shade of...

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Céu Gómez-Faulk, center right, looking up at a RAAVEN drone during a deployment.

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PhD student advancing hypersonic engineering for spacecraft

Jeff Zehnder — Thu, 05 Dec 2024 20:21:19 +0000

PhD student advancing hypersonic engineering for spacecraft Jeff Zehnder Thu, 12/05/2024 - 13:21

Jeff Zehnder

Mitch Wall is studying atmospheric conditions at the threshold of space to improve future hypersonic vehicles and spacecraft.

An aerospace PhD student and Smead Scholar at the �鶹��Ѱ��, Wall is conducting computational fluid dynamics research to better understand a challenging zone of the atmosphere between 70-120 km in altitude.

“We fly spacecraft through that region of the atmosphere, but it represents a range where the uncertainty in our fluid dynamics analysis is larger,” Wall said. “As a result, when building a vehicle, we have to ask the guidance people or the structures people to overdesign their systems to compensate because we can’t shrink our uncertainty.”

Traveling at hypersonic speeds, more than five times the speed of sound, causes the temperature of air and other gases around a vehicle to reach thousands of degrees, triggering chemical reactions on and around the vehicle. Reducing uncertainty in the atmospheric conditions would ease vehicle design and operation.

The analysis, however, demands much more than a typical desktop computer. Wall’s work requires use of �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder’s supercomputing resources.

“I’m working on a solver that couples two of the labs in-house fluid dynamics solvers,” Wall said. “One is for low altitude flow and another is more commonly used for high altitude flows in space. I’m wrangling these two different methods and there’s two different codes to learn instead of one. Then I’m dealing with the nuts and bolts to get them to play nicely together.”

It is a type of research with significant potential for the future.

“As we try to do more flying hypersonically, this is an area where we can sharpen our pencil and then be able to go places we wouldn’t necessarily go otherwise,” Wall said.

Wall’s research is funded through a prestigious National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) Fellowship he received in 2022.

“I really like the project I’m working on and having a fellowship you have the freedom to steer where you go. It was pretty exciting to get,” he said.

Growing up, Wall knew he had interests in math and physics, but it was not until high school teachers encouraged him to pursue engineering that he saw it as a career possibility.

“I didn’t really have an idea of what I could do with it. Understanding physical systems and diving deep into the math, understanding the world around you and having that perspective going through life is super satisfying to me,” he said.

Originally from Wisconsin, he completed his undergraduate degree in engineering mechanics at the University of Wisconsin Madison and decided to go on for a PhD at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder.

“The experiences I had at internships pushed me toward a PhD,” Wall said. “The people I was really impressed with and thought had really cool jobs, a lot of them had PhDs. I saw how that enabled you to make more important fundamental engineering decisions on projects.”

Wall chose �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder after connecting with students working under professor Iain Boyd, an expert on hypersonic aerothermodynamics. Boyd became his PhD advisor.

“I knew I wanted to do aerospace and heard about professor Boyd and got in touch with his students. It really attracted me here; everyone in his lab were working on things they cared about,” Wall said.

As a first generation college student, pursuing an advanced degree was a major step, but it was taken by both Wall and his brother.

“We didn’t come from an academic background and now he has a BS/MS in architecture and I’m working on my PhD,” Wall said. “I took education and ran with it. My dad was a carpenter, and I see the thread there, understanding how things are put together and work. My parents are very proud, which is nice.”

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PhD student working to keep astronauts safer on the Moon

Jeff Zehnder — Tue, 29 Oct 2024 15:20:34 +0000

PhD student working to keep astronauts safer on the Moon Jeff Zehnder Tue, 10/29/2024 - 09:20

Jeff Zehnder

Amrita Singh working with a vacuum chamber.

Amrita Singh is studying lunar dust to answer important health and technology questions for future Moon missions.

The gray, crushed rock material that coats the surface of the Moon is officially called regolith and presents substantial dangers, said Singh, a PhD student in the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at the �鶹��Ѱ��.

“The Apollo astronauts struggled a lot with lunar dust. It’s electrostatically charged, so it sticks to everything, and it’s basically crushed up glass in terms of how abrasive it is. It poses dangers to crew health,” she said.

Those risks include rapid deterioration of space suits used on Moon walks, as well as damage to systems inside space capsules or habitats on the Moon.

“We need to make sure our life support technologies are capable of surviving the lunar dust environment. It will enter the habitat. There’s no way of completely preventing that,” Singh said.

The recipient of a 2023 National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP), Singh is developing computational simulations and experimental tests of life support technologies to determine their continued effectiveness after exposure.

“My research focuses on worst-case scenarios. What if something goes wrong and the planned dust mitigation strategies fail and there’s dust everywhere?” Singh said. “We know we will see significant performance degradation for many technologies, but we don’t know what the degree of degradation or material damage will be. Those are the questions I’m trying to answer.”

Singh did not originally plan on a career in aerospace. As an undergraduate at the University of Southern California, she double majored in theater and astronautical engineering.

She was drawn to both, but envisioned her future would be in acting or directing. COVID-19 changed her trajectory.

Harrison Schmitt's space suit covered in lunar dust during Apollo 17.

“The pandemic hit my junior year, and all the jobs and plans I had lined up were destroyed,” she said. “I was spending a lot of time at home and took my first human spaceflight class, remotely, with Garrett Reisman, who is a former astronaut. That’s when I started thinking I could love aerospace as much as I love theater. As it turns out, I love it more.”

An aerospace education does present unique academic challenges, but Singh has persevered.

“I really value math and science, but they are not my strong suits and it will take me a couple tries to learn a physics concept before it finally clicks,” she said.

During her senior year, she began a work-from-home internship at NASA’s Ames Research Center, providing exposure to the world of research and piquing her interest in earning an advanced degree.

“The researcher I worked with was doing radiation modeling for cells, and she spent time re-introducing me to chemistry, biology, and physics — these fields I’d fallen out of love with — and made me fall in love with them again. It drove me to pursue a PhD,” Singh said.

She applied to �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder’s bioastronautics PhD program and is now in her second year. In 2023, she earned both the NSF GRFP and recognition as an Aviation Week 20 Twenties Winner, a program that honors promising aerospace students across the United States.

Last semester, she and Ella Schauss, a fellow aerospace PhD student, competed in NASA’s Human Lander Challenge, a student competition to design concepts for addressing Moon dust kicked up during descent and landing.

They took third place nationally, earning a $3,000 prize.

“There’s still so many questions about lunar dust,” Singh said. “That uncertainty is what drew me in. It’s such an important aspect of what it means to be in on the lunar surface. It’s really important for the future.”

Amrita Singh is studying lunar dust to answer important health and technology questions for future Moon missions...

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