Alejandra Ortiz-Morales graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from CETYS University in her home city of Mexicali, Baja California. During her time there, she developed an interest in materials and structures when she was exposed to metallurgy, metallography, and failure analysis. She participated in the 2018 summer research program in the Mexican National Institute of Astronomy studying astronomical instrumentation structures. Alejandra is currently working on her Master of Science in Aeronautics and Astronautics at Purdue, with a major on Structures & Materials. She is working in the ACME2 Laboratory with Dr. Michael Sangid, where they are working on developing a physics-based understanding of the damage tolerant behavior of Carbon Fiber reinforced Polymer Composites.

Ryan Howard and Ethan Wright are undergraduates at Purdue University in the school of Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering. They are Research Assistants in the Aerospace Systems-of-Systems Collaboratory, studying Operation Limits of Urban Air Mobility with Dr. Dan DeLaurentis, Professor William Crossley, and Professor Dengfeng Sun. Ryan is the President of Vertical Flight Systems Purdue, a multi-disciplinary team of undergraduate students working to design, build, and fly a passenger-capable, all-electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicle. Their current project, BoilerUp, flies a 100-lb payload for a 15-minute flight time.

Logan Walters is a first year master’s student with a concentration in aerodynamics. Working with Dr. Collicott, he is designing a suborbital payload to estimate damping of liquid propellants in zero-g environments in response to rotational pointing maneuvers.

Geoffrey Andrews is a Ph.D. candidate who studies hypersonic boundary layer transition using a variety of computational tools. In other words, he spends a lot of time staring at a computer, scratching his head, and thinking wistfully about the life that could have been. After surviving an unusual childhood defined by machine tools, homemade pyrotechnics, and bad ideas, Geoffrey earned his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering and Mechanics from Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania with a minor in Aerospace Engineering. He then journeyed to the vast, corn-filled flatlands of Indiana to pursue his graduate education, earning his M.S. from Purdue in 2017 before diving into his Ph.D. Outside of his ill-advised career plans, Geoffrey enjoys several ill-advised hobbies, such as flying vintage aircraft, baking obnoxiously complicated pastries, playing classical piano, climbing mountains in bow ties, occasionally running afoul of the Chemical Weapons Convention with his spicy cooking, and longing for the return of travel by airship.

Wanxin Jin is currently a fourth-year Ph.D. student at the School of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Purdue University. Prior to Purdue, he worked as a research assistant at the Technical University of Munich, Germany, from 2016 to 2017. Wanxin Jin received his B.S. degree and M.Sc. in Control Science and Engineering from Harbin Institute of Technology, China, in 2014 and 2016, respectively. His primary interest spans interdisciplinary fields of control theory, machine learning, and optimization with applications to robotics and human-robot autonomy. Wanxin’s works have been published in the leading journals/conferences of control, artificial intelligence, and robotics fields, such as Automatica, Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems, International Journal of Robotics Research, and IEEE Transactions on Robotics, etc.

Justin C. Major is a fourth-year PhD Candidate, National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow, and Bilsland Dissertation Fellow in the Purdue University Engineering Education Program. He is also a master’s student in the Purdue University Aeronautics and Astronautics program. As an undergraduate student at the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR), Justin completed Bachelor's degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Secondary Mathematics Education with an informal emphasis in engineering education. Through his involvement in the UNR PRiDE Research Lab and engagement with the UNR and Northern Nevada STEM Education communities, he studied student motivation, active learning, and diversity; developed K-12 engineering education curriculum; and advocated for socioeconomically just access to STEM education. As a Ph.D. Candidate with the STRiDE Research Lab at Purdue University, Justin's dissertation research focuses on the study of Intersectionality Theory and the intersectionality of socioeconomic inequality in engineering education, use of critical quantitative methodology and narrative inquiry to understand the complex stories of engineering students from traditionally minoritized backgrounds, and the pursuit of a socioeconomically just engineering education. Justin is also broadly interested in advancing pedagogy surrounding the teaching of structures and materials in aerospace and mechanical engineering contexts. Justin has won over a dozen awards for service, amongst others. Most recently he was named as the School of Engineering Education recipient for Purdue University, College of Engineering’s 2021 Outstanding Service Award.

I received a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from Auburn University in May of 2020. Currently, I work in the system of system’s lab under the guidance of Dr. DeLaurentis. I have completed multiple internships that focused on system of system simulations and integrated air and missile defense.

Mark Hartigan is a senior level undergraduate student in Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering. He is the project manager for the FEMTA Suborbital Flight Experiment, an undergraduate research group led by Professor Alina Alexeenko. Martin Degener is a junior level student of Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering. He is the assistant project manager of the FEMTA Suborbital Experiment, an undergraduate research group led by Professor Alina Alexeenko.

I am a Junior in Aerospace Engineering conducting research on computer performance at the Cooling Technologies Research Center. I am a founder and the undergraduate head of the Purdue Overclocking Group, a team which competes in intercollegiate computer overclocking competitions. I was a project manager in the NASA L’SPACE Mission Concept Academy designing a mission to Enceladus. Last semester, I won the Jacobs Space Engineering Group (JSEG) Space Tech Challenge with a novel technique to mitigate the effects of lunar dust on thermally radiating surfaces. I will be an intern at the Aerospace Corporation in the Thermal Management Department this summer.

Matt is a PhD student working in the Programmable Structures Lab under Prof. Andres Arrieta. His undergraduate education was at Oregon State University, where he received a bachelor of science in Mechanical Engineering, and at the University of Saarland in Saarbrücken, Germany where he also received a degree in Materials Science. He completed his master’s degree at Purdue with the thesis topic, “Demonstrator for selectively compliant morphing systems with multi-stable structures.” His research interests include morphing wings, fluid-structure interaction, programmable materials, additive manufacturing, and high-strain composites. When not in the lab, Matt enjoys a wide variety of interests, including woodworking, SCUBA diving, R/C aircraft, and Historical European Martial Arts.

I once played soccer at 40,000 ft, back in the days when flight regulations were not strict. Knowing how high we were above the ground was so awe inspiring that it burgeoned into a love of flight physics leading up to my graduate degree. Through my work on experimental projects at Purdue, I have enhanced my engineering skills in a variety of areas including propulsion hardware design, testing operations and safety. My current research interests include the application of laser diagnostic techniques to quantitative and qualitative descriptions of flames encountered in propulsion devices. As an example of this, the subject of my dissertation is the behavior of a reacting transverse jet flame in crossflow at high subsonic Mach numbers using 5kHz OH PLIF and 150 kHz OH* chemiluminescence.

Eli Sitchin is a first-year master’s student in the School of Aeronautics and Astronautics, having previously received his B.S. from Purdue in May 2020. He currently works as a research assistant for Dr. DeLaurentis at the Center for Integrated Systems in Aerospace.