Welcome!

I’m a Statistical Estimation Engineer in Austin, TX, and the author of “Engineering Your PhD” (affiliate link), which contains the various advice I collected during my graduate school tenure.

A brief synopsis of my story:

I was born and raised in Dallas, Texas. During middle and high school I trained in and taught Tae Kwon Do, obtaining my 3rd Degree Black Belt shortly after graduating from high school. As an undergraduate student at the University of Texas at Austin, I worked as a co-operative education student in 2005 and 2006 for United Space Alliance at NASA’s Johnson Space Center (JSC). There I worked in the International Space Station Training Division, becoming a certified instructor in three courses. Based on my experience at JSC, I was incredibly fortunate to be selected the 2007 Co-operative Education & Internship Association Student of the Year. I graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin in 2007, and then went on to receive a Master of Science degree in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin in 2009. I worked as an Aerospace Engineer for a.i. solutions from 2009 to 2012, performing navigation and mission design analysis for the NASA Magnetospheric Multi-Scale mission.

I returned to the Aerospace Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin in 2012, and received my PhD in 2016. I was awarded a NASA Space Technology Research Fellowship  for graduate studies immediately prior to returning to graduate school for my PhD in 2012. As part of the fellowship, I visited NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and Ames Research Center for extended periods to work with NASA mentors and colleagues on research problems relevant to NASA missions. After graduation in 2016 I accepted a Research Associate position within the Space and Geophysics Laboratory at the Applied Research Laboratories (ARL) of the University of Texas at Austin. I worked at ARL until the fall of 2021, and then returned in the spring of 2023.