In September of 2024, my brother, Nikolas Harris, and I started our venture, SPAERO Systems. SPAERO Systems is working to create sustainable technologies for use in space and on the ground. We competed in Ohio State's first annual BOSS Space Ventures and placed first in the competition.

Continuing on from my summer internship, I have been working on developing a tool for building NTP Tradespaces. The tool I am developing uses HTML, CSS, and Javascript on the front end and Python to run the backend. The main features of this tool include allowing users to create attributes (burntime, isp, engine mass, etc.) and define weights as well as utility plots for each attribute using utility data points and custom fits. Users can also define cases to specify values for each attribute per case and then create aggregated utility plots to form a Pareto front with the data. All of this is done within the UI.

During my summer internship, I researched designs for lander, REP (radioisotope electric propulsion), and SEP (solar electric propulsion) crafts to create a Python script that creates MELs (Master Equipment Lists) using calculated subsystem masses. I created a plot comparing wet masses between SEP and NEP (nuclear electric propulsion) vehicles which was later presented in a bi-weekly NASA NEP tag-up. I also developed a CONOPS program in Python to calculate propellant needs for delta v maneuvers, and at my mid-point review, I was asked to continue through the school year, which I accepted. I combined MELs and CONOPS work into a program called OCELOT, using Python's object-oriented programming to build a tool for defining vehicles, subsystems, delta v maneuvers, and more. OCELOT calculates initial wet masses, and I've recently added post-processing features for mass fraction, TOF, and alpha plots. I also used MOOSE (Multiphysics Object-Oriented Simulation Environment) to create transient thermal NTP (nuclear thermal propulsion) benchmark models

In January of 2022, I was elected the first president of the Diamond Grove Scholars, a student-led research community currently based out of The Ohio State University to engage and involve K-12 and college students in STEM and space. I am honored to be working with such an incredible group of students to make an impact not just on our local communities, but one day, our national communities as well.

I started Ian's Guides in fall of 2022 as a way for me to teach others about the topics I am learning in my degrees in Aerospace, Astrophysics, Physics, Mathematics, and Nuclear Engineering. Ian's Guides has been slowly evolving to include not only guide content but flashcards, useful equations, and web games as well. I will also be including more coding and programming content as I go on as well. I believe that education should be free to all, and so that is why all one needs is an account to get started learning some exciting, and useful things!

At the Starlab Ground Location-US (SGL-US), I supported Ohio State’s partnership with Starlab by representing the team during international partnership meetings and writing technical documents for budget renewal. Starlab is a new commercial space station that will be launched before the International Space Station’s sunset ride and so my work supported the development of Starlab. One project I worked on was developing a design for the microgravity workbenches in Starlab. The designs started as low-fidelity mockups, but a mid-fidelity mockup was designed and built with airflow and space for modular inserts for power, air, and fluid for experiment needs.

My work assisted in the Gas Turbine Lab's research focus on engine-speed blade tip rubs on casing substrates. My first project was working on designing and building a trigger card circuit to track and capture images of turbine blades as they spun to visualize the effects of rubbing with the casing substrate. This was my first experience with electronics and breadboard. After a few iterations, I built the trigger card circuit using logic gates, 8-bit binary counters, and DIP switches. After the trigger card circuit, I worked on designing and building a MATLAB GUI (graphical user interface) for lab organization; the program communicated with Excel spreadsheets to store the data and information. Another project I worked on was a MATLAB GUI to visualize run data. It was customizable based on input Excel spreadsheets to select axis and scale data.