Victor Sponer Email & Phone Number

I have managed a large team of students designing and building test articles for a student design project building a bipropellant Methalox rocket engine. This position taught me about teamwork, the systems engineering process, and taught many hands-on skills from precision machining to feed system design and construction. Following this project, I began my graduate student experience working in an electric propulsion lab at the University of Alabama in creating the hardware to run gridded ion thrusters. I learned about running tests, collecting data through data acquisition systems in LabVIEW (NI and LabJack). I also built prototype electronic boards to control heater temperatures and power levels. Following this experience, I began working on my thesis project where I have spent time learning how to thoroughly research a topic, learn industry and trade standards and common designs, and implementing that research into an experiment to calculate the mass flow rate of an exotic gas as well as measuring the pressure through a non-contact method. Over this period, I also connected with industry and manufacturer representatives and procured over $2,000 in equipment and materials to make my project possible. These skills have given me many opportunities in a hands-on lab setting and priceless knowledge in how to succeed as a research engineer, something I am excited to implement in my future career.