Leading mechanical team to configure mechanical system required to deorbit, descend, and Land a robotic science payload on the surface of Jupiter’s Icy Moon, Europa.

Responsible for the timely design, development, testing, and delivery of aerospace electro-mechanical systems. Effectively worked across multiple disciplines (thermal, structural, electrical) to efficiently oversee the development of products that meet performance, cost, and schedule goals. Owned and developed product specifications and cost estimates. Responsible for the conceptual, preliminary, and detailed design of the product including drawing creation, tolerance stack-up analysis, risk… Show more Responsible for the timely design, development, testing, and delivery of aerospace electro-mechanical systems. Effectively worked across multiple disciplines (thermal, structural, electrical) to efficiently oversee the development of products that meet performance, cost, and schedule goals. Owned and developed product specifications and cost estimates. Responsible for the conceptual, preliminary, and detailed design of the product including drawing creation, tolerance stack-up analysis, risk analysis, material specification, stress analysis, thermal analysis, dynamic analysis, design reviews, and product verification testing. Show less

Led mechanical team to develop test architecture and hardware for performance and load testing supersonic parachutes in high altitude, “Mars-like” environments for drastically reduced costs.

Lead team of 25+ engineers to design, build, test, and deliver all mechanical elements for the Low Density Supersonic Decelerator (LDSD) project, Supersonic Flight Dynamics Test (SFDT) vehicle. Oversaw configuration from cradle to grave. Developed cost estimates, detailed designs, manufacturing plans, assembly procedures, and test and integration plans. Worked with team to integrate all elements to vehicle and prepare vehicle for flight. Led recovery team to successful recovery from the… Show more Lead team of 25+ engineers to design, build, test, and deliver all mechanical elements for the Low Density Supersonic Decelerator (LDSD) project, Supersonic Flight Dynamics Test (SFDT) vehicle. Oversaw configuration from cradle to grave. Developed cost estimates, detailed designs, manufacturing plans, assembly procedures, and test and integration plans. Worked with team to integrate all elements to vehicle and prepare vehicle for flight. Led recovery team to successful recovery from the Pacific Ocean. SFDT is a balloon launched, high altitude flight test of 3 new entry, descent, and landing (EDL) technologies for future robotic and manned missions to Mars. Three 5-meter diameter, carbon composite, “Apollo like” entry body vehicles will be built and flown. The vehicles reach speeds of Mach 4 at 180,000 ft, allowing technology testing in a Mars-like entry environment on Earth. Vehicle #1 has competed a successful flight (see link) or google LDSD. Show less

Investigated the design of a high temperature and pressure environment (500 deg C and 1358psi) reduction gear box. Designed and assembled high temperature planetary reduction gear box. Developed high temperature and high pressure test chambers capable of applying specified running torque against tested high temperature motor and gearbox.

Lead mechanism designer/engineer for Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) Polarimeter. Designed, built and tested interchangeable quad spinning half wave plate mechanism. Performed cryogenic testing and performance verification activities at 4 deg Kelvin. Soon to be delivered to SOFIA’s HAWC Instrument for integration.

Designed, built and tested “Rockballer” mechanism that will allow the simultaneous coring and capture of sub-surface rock samples. Developed from concept through preliminary design, successfully coring many different candidate rock samples.

Designed, built, and tested single-axis, high-precision, gimbal-pointing mechanism for use in NASA’s ER-2 high altitude observation plane. The instrument was successfully flown and produced valuable data on the water content of clouds.

Performed conceptual, preliminary, and detail design for RBAs. Built, assembled, tested, and delivered the secondary mirror RBAs to AMD. The delivered actuators are capable of performing sub-nanometer steps while achieving a 16 mm range with a 1500+ Newton force capability. Designed and fabricated nanometer linear motion testbed for verification activities.

Designed, built, assembled, and tested 2 flight units and 2 flight spare units. The units achieved the ultra-low leak rates specified by the project scientist. Assembled units to TLS Assembly and tested for performance verification. Currently performing science measurements on the surface of Mars.

Performed conceptual and preliminary design phases of fine and coarse pointing mechanisms. Tested prototype linear ballscrew actuators and achieved 20 nanometer step sizes with a 120mm stroke using a custom built direct drive ballscrew actuator, closed loop controlled via a precision glass scale encoder. Presented paper on findings at IEEE Aerospace Conference 2008 and Aerospace Mechanism Symposium 2008.

-Worked as project engineer for turbo-machinery department on F-22 Raptor Stored Energy System; 16 hours per week) during academic year.-Interacted with a large team of designers, program managers, manufacturing engineers, technicians, supply chain managers, and customers to support system problems, testing, and production.-Designed, tested, and implemented new effective area flow test process between Honeywell and vendors to reduce air injector cost through the elimination of out of… Show more -Worked as project engineer for turbo-machinery department on F-22 Raptor Stored Energy System; 16 hours per week) during academic year.-Interacted with a large team of designers, program managers, manufacturing engineers, technicians, supply chain managers, and customers to support system problems, testing, and production.-Designed, tested, and implemented new effective area flow test process between Honeywell and vendors to reduce air injector cost through the elimination of out of specification delivery. Applied Six Sigma principles to create manufacturing procedures to eliminate pre-dryer test rejections and the costly scrapping of failed parts.-Acted as sole point of contact with potential new vendors for transition process for air/fuel check valves, running weekly teleconferences, including troubleshooting quality and acceptance test procedures. Show less