Stanford Student Space Initiative

Stanford Student Space Initiative (Stanford SSI) is one of the biggest student organizations on campus that attracts the space enthusiasts at Stanford to contribute to various projects. Throughout my time in the Rockets team of SSI, I have learned valuable lessons related to working on engineering projects done through collaborative efforts.

2024-25 - Project Fountain Hopper, Systems Lead

In my third year at Stanford, I am continuing at SSI by co-leading the Fountain Hopper team to focus on the development, testing, and utilization of the custom hybrid rocket engine. I am overseeing the project at a systems level and will contribute to the Avionics team, which handles the sensing and control implementations, and the Controls team, which focuses on pre-test and pre-flight simulations. More adventures and updates to come...

2023-24 - Project Phoenix, Systems and Avionics Lead

In my second year, I served as a systems lead for the new project Phoenix to bring back 2-stage competition rockets for SSI from pre-COVID years. Throughout the process, my co-lead and I went through budgeting, scheduling, making important project decisions, and going through review meetings with a board of faculty and alumni advisors. In addition, I also served as an avionics team lead to ensure the rocket's flight computers were functional in any condition and develop our payload that contains a temperature/pressure sensor and a working RasPi camera. The complexity of a 2-stage project necessitated frequent communication between the subteams and multiple design iterations for different wirings and components. The team eventually participated in the 2024 Spaceport America Cup in the 10,000 ft category with a successful launch.

2022-23 - Project Fountain Hopper, Structures Team

As a freshman, I joined SSI's Fountain Hopper team, which had (and still has) the goal of building a rocket with thrust vector control (TVC) and throttleable engine for the final goal of autonomous landing. Throughout the year, as a structures team member, I worked extensively on CAD design and 3D printing to produce various rocket components for testing.