What is your next adventure?

I’ve already started my adventure as a senior professional staff at Johns Hopkins’ Applied Physics Lab.

What are you most excited about your next adventure?

I love solving puzzles, that’s why I choose engineering. Whenever there’s a problem that tough to crack, I get excited about that. Most people may not like the challenge, but I tend to prefer challenges like that, so for me I’m excited about my research and the ability to explore something novel. To see the impact that new algorithms could have in the area of urban air mobility is exciting.

Also, I’ll be able to continue post-doc research thanks to the ACCESS program sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF). I’ll be able to keep exploring the problem I was looking into throughout my graduate research through large-scale simulations.

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

I interned at the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) and later made the transition to full-time as a graduate researcher. My research is focused on multi-agent systems, more specifically I was looking at urban air mobility and the trade-off between safety and performance.

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

I was fortunate because when I started as a graduate student at Georgia Tech, I received the Georgia Space Grant Consortium Fellowship, which allowed me to participate in many volunteer opportunities for STEM and it helped me network and meet a lot of people, but also helped me to see the impact it could have on future generations.

Working in the DCL lab was a good learning experience, but also the students I was around I learned so much from them and made great friendships through that. My advisor Eric Feron was great and knew the field very well and gave me great research experience.

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

Find something you are passionate about, something that you wouldn’t even consider a job because you enjoy doing it.

Take the opportunity to ask questions as much as you can and try to learn as much as you can. There’s no bad question, so don’t be too shy to ask a questions.

Find a hobby you are interested in. When you’re in school, there are so many clubs and activities you can get involved in. Once you get out of school, you’ll find you have a lot more time on your hands.