NASA Nebraska Space Grant

My two summers as a NASA Nebraska Space Grant intern at JPL were the foundation of a career I could not have imagined at the time. Working on the Cliff-bot multi-rover exploration system —designing mechanical, electrical, and control systems —gave me hands-on experience that directly shaped my graduate thesis at the University of Nebraska and launched me into the aerospace industry.

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Since then, I have spent 20 years designing, building, and operating hardware that has reached Mars, Earth orbit, the Moon, and beyond. Highlights include mission operations support for the Mars Exploration Rovers, flight hardware for the Phoenix Mars Lander and Curiosity rover, and current work as a Sr. Chief Aerospace Engineer at Blue Origin, leading systems for missions to Titan, the Moon, and Phobos. I am deeply grateful to the NASA Nebraska Space Grant program for providing the springboard that made all ofthis possible.

I spent two summers at NASA Ames Research Center, and another summer at JPL, all under the umbrella of NASA Nebraska support. That support also extended to funding my rocket builds as part of the UNL Aerospace Club, my graduate research in robotics, and the 2018 NASA USIP launch, my first payload in space. These experiences were invaluable for my career as it exists today. 

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After graduating, I've spent 6 years at Honeybee Robotics, designing flight components for the Dragonfly mission to Titan, as well as prototyping hardware for Earth Orbit, Lunar exploration, and Mars Sample Return. I've been a Payload Uplink Lead for the Curiosity Rover's SAM instrument for the last 1,300 Martian days, or just over 4 years. None of this would be possible without the boosted-launch-assist that NASA Nebraska provided. 

My time at the University of Nebraska played a defining role in my career. As a master’s student in Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics, I had the opportunity to work on two very different projects that ended up being equally important to my development as an engineer. I helped develop a portable, wireless electronic timing system for the Nebraska Athletics Department that later became a startup called Dashr, while also working as a research engineer in Dr. Shane Farritor’ssurgical robotics lab.

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Those experiences gave me hands-on exposure to both product development and advanced robotics and mechanical systems. For my thesis, I developed a novel surgical robotic device, and through the athletics project I learned how to build a practical, reliable product that could serve Nebraska Athletics while also being offered at a price point accessible to youth athletic programs across the country. My connection to Dr. Farritorultimately led to my opportunity at Honeybee Robotics, where I’ve spent the past eight years developing robotic drilling and sampling systems for the Moon and Mars, growing from an early-career mechanical engineer into a Senior Systems Engineer. I’ve also remained connected to UNL by recruiting there and mentoring the Nebraska Lunabotics team.

My engineering career began in the student organizations at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where the NASA Nebraska Space Grant provided the funding that made everything possible. As a member —and later Team Lead —of the Lunabotics Competition Team, and then President of the Aerospace Club, I developed the hands-on, team-driven engineering skills that no classroom alone could have given me. Without Nebraska Space Grant's support, those opportunities simply would not have existed.

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Today, I am a Mechanical Engineer at Honeybee Robotics, a Blue Origin company, where I serve as the design lead for the wheels and a key mechanism on the NASA CP-21 lunar rover. I also support Mars science operations for the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument aboard the Curiosity rover. The path from those early student projects to working on lunar and Mars missionstraces directly back to the foundation Nebraska Space Grant helped me build.

Before starting college, I had no aspirations of working for NASA —I simply didn't believe it was achievable for someone like me. That all changed when NASA's Nebraska EPSCoR(NASA NE) began funding the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) Aerospace Club and its various student teams, sparking a hope and inspiration I hadn't felt before.

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My first major opportunity came through NASA NE's support of UNL's Lunabotics team, a NASA-run collegiate robotics design and operations competition. Without that funding, my teammates and I would have had no institutional support for the project, as it fell entirely outside our university's curriculum. NASA NE made it possible for us to compete and grow as engineers in a way our university alone could not provide.

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The next doorNASA NE opened was even more transformative: an internship at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California. That experience became the defining turning point in my career, directly leading to my current role as a Design Engineer at Honeybee Robotics. Since joining the team, I have had the privilege of working on LISTER, a drill instrument that successfully landed on the Moon in 2025 aboard Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost lander. I have also contributed to hardware now operating in Earth orbit on an active NASA satellite, and I am currently supporting efforts to get NASA's VIPER rover to the lunar surface.

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None of this would have been possible without NASA NE opening a door to a career I once only dared to dream about.

My career trajectory in Aerospace is one I am thankful to attribute to NASA Nebraska and the UNL Aerospace club, where I served as an active member and later propulsions lead for the Design, Build, Fly team. NASA Nebraska was integral in funding the project's material and travel budget, enabling students to compete and engage with engineering talent beyond the university. Aerospace was not my first passion entering university, but also not a dream I thought possible. My experiences in the club helped greatly in changing this perception. 

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I hold a master's and bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and work as an electrical engineer at Honeybee Robotics, a Blue Origin company. Over the past 3.5 years, I have contributed to Dragonfly —a drone-type rover set to be deployed to Titan, a moon of Saturn, in search of life. As the Responsible Engineer, my primary contributions include designing, manufacturing, and testing the flight motor power card, as well as the assembly and test of the flight motor controller card PCBAs, both of which actuate and drive all motors within the DrACOsubsystem. My career would not be where it is today without the inspiration and opportunities provided by the UNL Aerospace club and NASA Nebraska.

As a student at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, the NASA Nebraska Space Grant played a significant role in shaping my path as an engineer. I knew I wanted to be an engineer, but I did not see the space industry as a realistic option until I joined UNL’s Aerospace Club. NASA NE was, and continues to be, the club’s biggest supporter, making it possible for student teams to grow, take on ambitious projects, and pursue meaningful opportunities beyond the classroom. Without that funding, our team would not have had the same ability to travel, build competitive hardware, or participate in engineering competitions such as NASA Lunabotics. Those experiences gave me practical exposure to the full engineering process from early design and analysis to integration, testing, troubleshooting, and operating under real-world constraints. Aerospace Club became one of the most valuable parts of my education, and the hands-on project experience I gained there continues to help me every day in my career as an avionics engineer.

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The opportunities made possible by NASA Nebraska’s support also helped prepare me for my dream job working on aerospace robotics at Honeybee Robotics in Pasadena, California. Over the past four years, I have had the privilege of contributing to flight hardware across multiple missions. Within a month of graduating with my bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering, I was working on flight avionics for the TRIDENT drills, a pair of one-meter-long sampling instruments, one of which flew to the Moon last year as part of the PRIME-1 lander, while the other is planned to fly with the VIPER rover in the next few years. Today, I serve as a Responsible Engineer for part of the avionics on NASA’s CP-21 rover. Looking back, NASA NE was a key part of my engineering education, providing the resources, opportunities, and inspiration that allowed students like me to develop into working aerospace engineers. I am incredibly grateful for their continued investment in Nebraska students and the future of aerospace engineering.