Hometown: Fremont, NE
High School: Fremont Senior High School
What made you decide to attend USC: I didn’t know much about USC as a high school student. I applied to SC because I got a brochure with palm trees on it and said “California would be cool.” I was accepted and then found out that SC has an Astronautical Engineering program and said “Astronautics would be cool.” That’s when I decided to come to SC. Now I’m very glad I did.
Best experience/interaction with a professor: My Astronautics 101 professor invited me to come to Colorado to work for him with the Air Force Research Laboratory during the summer following my freshman year. It was a great experience—I got to do a lot of cool things in the lab that many students don’t get the chance to do as freshmen. Plus, whenever you have a boss that insists that you aren’t coming into work on Friday so that you and the group can climb a mountain over the weekend, you know you’ve found a good gig.
Favorite Class: Space Environment (ASTE 330) & Mechoptronics (AME 341)
Involvements/extracurricular activities: Rocket Lab, International Student Satellite Project, USC W.V.T. Rusch Undergraduate Engineering Honors Program, Global Fellows Internship Program, Tau Beta Pi, Relay for Life, Viterbi Summer Overseas Program, ATPS, Kairos Society
Favorite on-campus event: As cliché an answer as this is, it deserves to be: Trojan football games!
Best off-campus experience: Skydiving at Perris Valley, studying in Spain, interning in China, and researching in Japan
Favorite memory from freshman year: My first rocket launch in the desert, my first skydive on my 19th birthday, and my first Trojan football game.
What you like about being in LA: I love the diversity of LA. You meet people of all walks of life in this city, and it’s never dull; it’s great meeting someone with a completely different outlook on things than you. LA has a unique culture that is essentially a melting pot of many of the cultures of the world—nowhere else do you have the opportunity to experience so much in one place like you do in Los Angeles. I love all the many things that you can do in LA and that each one will be completely different than the last.
Research/study abroad experience: I spent the summer after sophomore year studying abroad in Madrid, Spain, with the Viterbi Overseas Program; the summer after junior year was spent interning at a company in Shanghai, China, through the USC Global Fellows Program.
As of writing this, I am currently in Kitakyushu, Japan, doing astronautics research in the Laboratory of Spacecraft Environment Interaction Engineering. I am developing the thermal control system for a research satellite that is planned to be launched into orbit in 2011, as well as exploring some independent research projects in the lab. I will be here until December 2010 before returning to classes at USC.
Hobbies/interests: Skydiving, traveling, hiking/camping, rock-climbing, pole-vaulting, reading, the beach, manned spaceflight & space mission design, space industry entrepreneurship
