My name is John Pye, and I am studying Aerospace Engineering and Computer Engineering at the University of Michigan. I am currently a Pathways Civil Servant Intern working at the NASA Langley Research Center in the Autonomous Integrated Systems Research Branch. I am currently working on a variety of both independent and collaborative projects, where I focus on the development of control algorithms and autonomous systems. In particular:• Developing collaborative, heterogeneous, and autonomous systems robust to uncertainty, disturbances, and changing environments to enable long-duration operations in adverse environments.• Formulating robust control methods for highly nonlinear and uncertain safety-critical systems. • Building new simulation environments and extending existing simulations to enable modeling and evaluation of highly complex and uncertain dynamical systems.• Writing research proposals, reviewing external funding proposals, and communicating work at internal and external conferences and workshops to promote private sector involvement in missions.In the past, I worked as a research assistant in Professor Ella Atkins’s Autonomous Aerial Systems (A2SYS) lab and later Professor Panagou's Distributed Autonomous Safe Controls (DASC) lab, where I supported research by:• Developing a collaborative drone communication architecture and trajectory generation software, now also being used by Professor Leia Stirling’s group’s NASA JPL research as test-critical software• Designing and performing experiments to analyze payload tether physical characteristics• Planning a test regimen for the emergency landing site authentication algorithm• Charting flight plans over university facilities to perform real-world experiments• Integrating GPS position localization to facilitate real-world tests• Coordinating with university safety officials and FAA to ensure safe testingI also currently worked as an Instructional Aide for the Robotics Institute Director, Professor Jessy Grizzle in one of the Robotics Institute’s first undergraduate course offerings, Computational Linear Algebra, where I assisted course activities by:• Assisting Professor Grizzle in developing new course material and assignments• Holding laboratory lectures to improve student programming skills• Hosting office hours to assist students with coursework