What is your next adventure?

I’m working at Boeing as an acoustics engineer. I recently packed up and moved across the country to Seattle, Washington. I finally left the South and landed somewhere much colder, which means I’m no longer sweating at night. I’m putting my research to great use. In grad school, my research focused on aeroacoustics with Professor Krish Ahuja, particularly jet and jet exhaust noise, so I’ve been a great fit here at Boeing. I’m already applying that work while also expanding my knowledge into other areas. Even though my research centered on jet noise, I’m now working on different types of engine noise, airframe noise, and noise prediction methods, collaborating with engine companies, propulsion teams, and structures teams on the many components that can generate noise.

What about your next adventure are you most looking forward to?

For one, I’m just enjoying exploring a new place; Seattle is such an amazing place to live. I’m also excited to be able to jump right into work that ties directly to my expertise. Normally, when you arrive at a big company, at least at Boeing, if you come in fresh out of college with a bachelor’s or even a master’s degree, you usually start as a Level 1 or Level 2 and rotate through different programs. In the noise group, for example, we have several new hires coming in this summer, and I think one or two of them are actually from Georgia Tech. Typically, you’d rotate through different areas, spending a year or so in each, until you find your niche. What’s been so great for me, and what I’m really excited about in terms of the doors this Ph.D. has opened, is that as soon as I arrived, they knew I knew my stuff and wanted to leverage that knowledge. 

Did you have any previous co-op, internship, or research experience in this area?

I am a Georgia Tech researcher through and through. This is my first “out of Techf tech experience.”. It is my first time working in industry. I never had an internship or a co-op, but I gathered years and years of research experience at Georgia Tech. 

I started undergraduate research in my third year. That was when I took AE 4451 Jet and Rocket Propulsion and realized how exciting this field really was. I went to the Ben T. Zinn Combustion Lab website and reached out to a professor and a research engineer, and said, “My name is Jackson, I got an A in this class, and I want to work in the Combustion Lab.” That became my first research experience, working in one of Professor Tim Lieuwen’s groups on a model-scale combustor as part of a project sponsored by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. I worked there for about a year.

Around the same time, one of my senior electives was Space Instrumentation for Life Detection, a joint aerospace and Earth and atmospheric sciences course taught by Professor Chris Carr. The work was completely different and closer to astrobiology. For the class project, I built a system to grow bacteria in a sealed container and detect the gases they emit using a small electronic nose. The idea was to search for chemical signatures that would indicate life. After the class ended, I asked Prof. Carr if I could keep working on the project, and he gave me a spot in the Planetary eXploration Lab (PXL). I continued for another semester, and that research material eventually flew on a CubeSat mission a few years later through the Planetary Exploration Lab. 

Those experiences made me realize how much I loved research. It felt like being placed in an academic sandbox where the goal was simply to find a problem and solve it. After earning my bachelor’s degree in Spring 2022, I joined the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) as a summer research intern. That was my first exposure to acoustics research. I worked on rotor noise from electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) vehicles, essentially flying taxis. If you have ever heard a quadcopter drone hovering nearby, you know how irritating that sound can be, and a lot of work goes into making those systems quieter. That summer was also how I met my advisor, Professor Krish Ahuja.

I later interviewed with him and joined his at GTRI-ATAS, where I spent three years working on jet noise research for the F.A.A. as part of a large multi-university and industry study called ASCENT 59. The project involved universities including Stanford, Illinois, and Penn State, along with industry partners like Gulfstream Aerospace. I even traveled to Washington, D.C., to present our work when my advisor could not attend. I ended up receiving more questions than anyone else presenting that day, and people lined up afterward to talk about the research.

Along the way, I also supported other projects at GTRI, including work on underground pipe leak detection using acoustic and seismic sensors, and collaborating with colleagues working on high-temperature plasmas and hypersonics. By the time I entered industry, I did not just have academic credentials, I had years of applied research experience that prepared me to hit the ground running.

How did your educational experience at Georgia Tech help you to achieve your goals?

Georgia Tech first taught me how to be an engineering student. You take the classes, earn the grades, and learn the material. But once I got into research, I realized there’s so much more to engineering than getting an A on a thermodynamics exam. Georgia Tech helped me put that knowledge into practice. Being able to solve textbook problems or do well on a test is important, but what really makes an engineer is working in real engineering environments solving real problems and doing the work engineers actually do. Georgia Tech provides those opportunities in a way few places can. That’s the biggest thing I tell people considering Georgia Tech: the research opportunities are world-class, and the doors that are open, even to undergraduates are incredible. Nothing prepares you for the real world like that. I honestly wouldn’t be where I am today if I hadn’t taken advantage of those opportunities, because that’s what makes you a helluva engineer.

What advice would you give to an underclassman who would like to follow the same path?

The biggest piece of advice I can offer is to find something that truly excites you, something that drives you. If you don’t actively seek out those opportunities, you’ll probably do okay. You’ll get good grades, you’ll graduate, and you’ll probably still land a good job. But something I really love about my job is that I don’t think about how much money I make. I love what I do because I took the time to figure out what I enjoy and what motivates me. If you come across a topic in class and think, “This is really cool,” follow up on it. Talk to your professor, look into what they’re doing in their lab, and see if there’s a way to get involved. If you worked on a class project you genuinely enjoyed, ask if you can continue that work in a research setting.

Take advantage of your electives, too. There are so many great opportunities that aren’t strictly part of the required curriculum, but you won’t discover them unless you try. I didn’t even realize I was interested in acoustics until I saw it offered as an elective. I took it because I’d been involved in choir and band growing up and thought sound was interesting. Four years later, it’s what I do for a living. You have to make opportunities for yourself. Don’t wait for things to fall into your lap. Life comes from you, not at you.