What is your next adventure?

I recently accepted a position at AST SpaceMobile in Lanham, Maryland. The company is working on building and deploying satellite arrays to create global cell phone coverage—essentially worldwide 5G access. I think that’s incredibly exciting, especially for regions that don’t have reliable internet connectivity.

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

A couple of things come to mind, but what I’m most excited about is working on something that feels like it has a real, tangible impact for a lot of people. We’re talking about global internet or cell phone service—and while that might not change my day-to-day life much, the idea that it could help millions of others is incredibly exciting. It’s also great to find something this impactful that still keeps me in the spacecraft space.

I always wanted to be working on flight software for spacecraft, and that's kind of where I've ended up. I was really surprised to end up somewhere this close to what I want to be doing, immediately out of Georgia Tech. It's a nice little intersection of feeling like I'm helping, and I like rockets. I mean, I was at this school for a long time for a reason. I like rockets.

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

I’ve earned all of my degrees here at Georgia Tech. I’m a quadruple jacket. I double majored in computer science (CS).

The funny thing about being here for a while is that, because of the double major and everything else, I spent most of my time on campus. I interned at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California during the summer of 2018. I worked on the systems engineering team—specifically the model-based systems engineering group. Obviously, I was just an intern, so I mostly did small tests and a few commits to some open-source codebases the lab was using. But in a roundabout way, some of that work ties back to actual missions. Things like Europa Clipper, Opportunity, and Perseverance—the rover that’s on Mars right now. My contribution was tiny—so small you could almost pretend it doesn’t exist—but it wasn’t zero. And that’s still pretty cool.

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

I’d say it comes down to two categories. The first is the obvious stuff about what you learn in class. When I first interviewed, people asked if I knew anything about Kalman filters. Luckily, I’d taken classes on that, so yeah—I knew what a Kalman filter was. Same with orbital mechanics. Those are things Georgia Tech taught me.

Now, I don’t remember every single detail from every class—nowhere close—but having that foundation means all that knowledge is somewhere in my head, and I can refresh myself pretty easily when I need to. 

The second category is honestly more important: all the little things. For example, the network Georgia Tech gave me. I’ve got friends who are incredible coders—way better than me. I have a CS degree, but I’ve always thought of myself as an aerospace guy who happens to code. So, whenever I hit a wall and can’t remember how to write something in C++ or Python, I always have someone I can ask. That’s a huge advantage. And over time—especially in grad school—Georgia Tech made me a lot less scared to ask questions. You get to a point where you realize you’re not going to figure everything out on your own, and that’s okay. You learn to accept that and lean on others when you need to. So, in a way, a lot of Georgia Tech was about learning how to not be scared—of asking questions, of admitting what you don’t know, and of tackling hard problems anyway.

When you come in as a first-year—and I think this is a common experience for a lot of Georgia Tech students I’ve talked to—you were one of the smartest kids in your high school. Then you take Calculous II, and it just grinds you into the pavement. It can absolutely beat you up if you’re coming from a regular high school environment, and Georgia Tech doesn’t really let up on that pressure. It’s not that it gets easier, but you start to realize something important: just because something is hard, and you look at it and don’t immediately understand it, that doesn’t mean you’re doomed. 

In addition to my academic work, I had fun at Georgia Tech. I was actually a co-founder of a club at Georgia Tech called Smash Jackets—the competitive Super Smash Bros. organization. A friend and I were big fans of fighting games, especially Smash, so we started a club for it. At its peak, we were getting 40 to 50 people every Friday night to play. Through that, I met a lot of people across the Southeast. I’ve been gone for a while now, but I still keep in touch—and the club still exists. It’s going strong almost a decade later. If you know anything about student orgs at Georgia Tech, that’s rare. A club outlasting its founders is unusual, and one lasting 10 years—unless it’s a major sports team like the Georgia Tech Swim Club—is almost unheard of.

Honestly, I think that’s the thing I’m most proud of from my time at Georgia Tech: creating something with that kind of impact that’s lasted this long. I mean, I also have a Ph.D.—but a lot of people have done that.

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

Georgia Tech taught me a lot about breaking things down into smaller problems. Sometimes that means taking 15 minutes to get up, walk around the block, and think about whatever I’m stuck on.

I try to break things into small wins. Like, my personal goal might be to write two lines of code. I’ll spend five or ten minutes making sure those lines work, and then I call that a victory. After that, I’ll go chat with my roommates for a few minutes. It’s about constantly giving yourself those little wins.

And here’s the part people never believe—especially incoming students—but trust me: do not conflate the number on a piece of paper with how well you’re doing in a class. I know I, and a lot of other people I know who have panicked after getting a 40 on a test. It means way less than you think. Especially if you’re above the class average—you should never worry a day in your life.

Also, do sit down, and do your assignments. That's one that some people just don't do, and it creates problems later. Study for your tests. Hopefully, you're somewhere close to the average, and so long as you're pretty close to the average, you never need to worry. Now if you're below average, that's when you start talking to the professor, but just keep going.