Dr. Swartwout is the founder and director of the Space Systems Research Laboratory. He is a Professor of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering and a Kranz Teaching Fellow in the School of Science and Engineeering. As a graduate student at Stanford, he was the program manager for the student-built Sapphire spacecraft (pictured at left). Though he was working for Bob Twiggs at the time that the CubeSat concept was invented, CubeSats are not his fault. (Mostly.)
Alexander is an incoming Ph.D. student in the Space Systems Research Laboratory at Saint Louis University, starting in Fall 2026. His research interests are in spacecraft GNC, with a focus on onboard autonomy for rendezvous, proximity operations, and docking. He is particularly interested in convex optimization, model predictive control (MPC), and trajectory planning for safe autonomous spacecraft operations.
Before joining the Ph.D. program, Alexander earned his B.Sc. in Aerospace Engineering from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Ghana and completed his M.S. research at SLU on MPC for spacecraft rendezvous and proximity operations.