Technical Program Leadership

Blue Origin – Meteoroid & Debris Shielding

Business Context: Meteoroids and orbital debris (MMOD) pose the greatest risk to spacecraft survivability and crew safety. At Blue Origin, I serve as the single subject-matter expert (SME) for MMOD, responsible for end-to-end risk management across multiple space programs including the Blue Moon lander and Orbital Reef.

Problem Statement: Integrate MMOD protection into spacecraft design and mission planning—balancing mass, cost, safety, and compliance with NASA standards—while minimizing orbital debris generation.

My Role: Sole MMOD lead, providing technical guidance to senior leadership and government stakeholders. I own all aspects of MMOD strategy and execution: risk assessment, shielding design, requirements definition, supplier integration, test campaigns, verification, and delivery.

Key Contributions:

• Tool Development: Built custom analysis libraries integrating NASA environment models with high-performance computing and AI/ML methods for rapid, probabilistic risk assessment.
• Shielding & Architecture: Designed and validated spacecraft shielding architectures using finite element models, hyper-velocity test campaigns, and physics-informed ML models, achieving up to thousands of kilogram reductions through optimized shielding design and system architecture.
• Program Integration: Drove MMOD considerations into supply chain and manufacturing, managing a ~$XXM budget and schedule to ensure material and component choices met risk requirements without cost or timeline overruns.
• Customer Engagement: Led MMOD sections of NASA design reviews, negotiated requirements, and authored compliance documentation securing program funding and flight approvals.
• Enterprise Leadership: Served as single-threaded lead on MMOD across Blue Origin, advising executives and program managers, and coordinating across sub-systems, programs, and business-units.

Impact: Delivered spacecraft protection systems that met stringent Internal and NASA MMOD requirements, enabled thousands of kilograms in mass savings, and de-risked multi-billion-dollar lunar and orbital programs.

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President of Cooper Union Motorsports – Collegiate Formula SAE

Business context: Cooper Union Motorsports is a collegiate team that designs, builds and races an open-wheel formula-style race car from two-stories underground on Manhattan.

Problem statement: Lead a team of 45 engineering students to a top-10 position in the 2021 Formula SAE Michigan competition and transition the team to an electric vehicle competition, and navigate the complexities of partial lab access during the COVID pandemic.

My role: I was elected team President in 2021. As President, I had executive authority of the team’s tactical and strategic implementation.

My Contributions:

• Planned and executed comprehensive fundraising strategy securing $80k in cash donations and $2M+ of in-kind support.
• Acted as primary interface with school administration coordinating Dean’s office, finance, fundraising, and facilities teams.
• Bred a hardware-rich design ethos and set new team record for annual vehicle drive time exceeding benchmark by 3x.
• Wrote lap-time optimization script for optimizing vehicle dynamics, leading to team record in the the Autocross event.
• Mentored and taught ~20 undergraduate students in software and engineering design.
• Implemented holistic quality management system significantly reducing manufacturing non-conformance for student-made parts.

My Impact:

• Successfully transitioned the team to the FSAE Electric Vehicle competition for 2022, and completed preliminary design of EV race car 5 months in advance.
• Ranked 11th out of 160 in the country in the FSAE design event.
• Played a key role in getting my first job at Axiom Space!