Experience
Between internships, student groups, and volunteering. These are the organizations I have been most involved with throughout my high school and college career.
Internships
In the spring of 2021 I spent 8 months working for Rivian’s manufacturing engineering department.
Rivian, an electric truck startup based in Irvine, CA, spent Q1-3 of 2021 bringing the R1T and R1S electric Vehicles from the prototype stage to costumer sellable, mass produced vehicles.
During my time there, I learned about manufacturing process design, production tooling design, and design for assembly. During the second half of my internship I took over ownership of a manufacturing line from another ME and prepared it for handoff to the operations and process engineering teams.
In this Instagram video posted by Rivian, one of the managers of my org, Fasil Kero, walks through the Trim 0 and Body Marriage lines. Trim 0 was the line I owned and my mentor owned Body Marriage, so I had heavy involvement in that line throughout my internship. It is exciting to see changes I implemented still in effect over a year later in this video.
Prototype to Production
In my time at Rivian, I validated manufacturing processes on prototype vehicles and scaled them to a full rate production line. The photo below is the validation production line and the photo on the left is me with the first Rivian to roll of the full size production line.
Line Ownership
During my first co-op I had the opportunity to take over ownership of a full manufacturing line from a full time manufacturing engineer who was switching departments. I learned about accountability and independence and received both praise and constructive feedback from my manager. My primary focus on the line I owned was design for assembly improvements, process balancing changes, and cycle line layout improvements.
My second co-op was with SpaceX as a Starlink Engineering Intern. In my 4 months working in Hawthorne, I worked on the manufacturing line launch for the “Starlink Business” user terminal.
Starlink is a Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite constellation which is used to distribute internet to remote areas using a satellite connection versus a cable, fiber, or cellular connection. User terminals are the antennas that Starlink customers use to connect to the satellites (the business terminal is pictured to the right). The business user terminal is a larger, more powerful, and more durable version of previous user terminals designed for commercial applications.
During my internship, I dove into solving problems with the design to improve manufacturability as well as problems with pre-existing tooling.
Lift Assist Tooling
One of my projects associated with the larger, more difficult to handle Starlink Business dishes was to make lift assist tooling for the vibration welding machines. I used two different custom designs for two different vibration welding machines which reduced operator fatigue and cycle time. The lift assist also integrated with the existing program of the vibration welding machine to ensure proper loading.
High Density WIP Racks
One of my smaller projects in my time at SpaceX ended up being very impactful. I developed a waterjet manufacturable system which allowed us to increase the capacity of work in progress (WIP) racks by 50%. In a manufacturing facility with limited floor space, this helped us improve our buffer sizes and reduced non-value added time from walking the carts between lines.
For the summer before my senior year I worked for my family’s company, Northcape. Northcape is a producer and distributor of outdoor furniture frames and cushions. In my short tenure at Northcape, was the sole engineering contributor to a launch of a domestic furniture production line, as well as launched a new product development workflow. As an old school distributer moving into manufacturing, Northcape does not have any full-time engineers on staff. I worked with the CEO to improve the domestic manufacturing area of the business. I worked with the operations staff to upgrade their AutoCAD workflow which they had adopted from domestic cushion manufacturing, and introduced Fusion360 so that they could have better tools to develop frames as well.
Product Development
Using my engineering background, I helped Northcape set up in-house product development. I helped them transition from using AutoCAD for furniture design (which they had carried over from their cushion shop) and introduced Fusion360 for improved modeling as well as simulation
Assembly Process Flow
I used what I had learned from my experience in manufacturing engineering to lead an effort to bring up a new business area responsible for domestic manufacturing of outdoor furniture frames. These frames are made from recycled plastic synthetic lumber and utilize shortened supply chains to drive down the cost of a product which has high cost to ship.
Student Groups
Northeastern Baja SAE
Baja SAE is an off-road vehicle design competition where students design, manufacture, and race a single seater off-road vehicle within a set of constraints defined in every year’s iteration of rules.
I spent my first year in Baja in the machine shop familiarizing myself with manual machining and other manufacturing principles. I contributed to the design of manufacturing jigs for welded assemblies and manufactured many of them myself. This gave me an opportunity to learn how to effectively design a part that needs to be practical to manufacture.
My second year with the team was an off-season because of the pandemic, so I focused on developing an IMU test system to validate suspension setup changes and their impact on cornering forces.
For my final two years, I took over as suspension lead. I facilitated the team’s migration from manual geometry design using a solidworks parametric model to a purpose-built suspension design and simulation software from Lotus Engineering to more effectively analyze and iterate geometry changes over the course of a single design season.
Transmission Design Capstone
For my capstone design project, a few of my teammates and I designed a new 4 wheel drive transmission system for our 2023 car. This driveshaft system included features that would improve performance and reliability versus our previous chain drive system.
Lotus Suspension Analysis
As Suspension Lead, I introduced a new software from Lotus Engineering to help us rapidly iterate on suspension geometry. This software allowed us to tune our dynamic characteristics to an optimized state despite limiting factors including packaging constraints and CV joint misalignment limits.
Northeastern Mens Rugby
After playing football through middle school and high school, I had no plans of continuing to play competitive sports in college. After the first week of classes, I found that I was missing that part of my activities, so I joined the rugby team. Through my four years as a player on the team, I learned the game and progressed my skills from being a walk on B-side player, to playing my first A-side time. In my senior year I started 3 games for our NCR Division 1 A-side team playing in the Liberty conference.
I also progressed on the administrative side of the club. In my junior year I served as vice president, where I coordinated purchasing and distribution of team apparel, as well as managed collection of team dues. My senior year, I was elected president. I lead a club with a membership of roughly 60 active participants, coordinated nationwide travel and match planning for a D1 A-side team, and a B-side team, maintained a balanced operating budget, and saw the team through a fall 15s season and a spring 7s season.
Liberty Conference Bowl Series
During my presidency, We made it to the liberty conference bowl series during 15s season. There, we beat Fordham to secure a bowl victory.
Team Administration
As President, I oversaw an eboard of 12 people to manage a team of roughly 80 participants. In this position I organized programs for recruitment and education of new players, as well as travel and purchasing for our high ranking division 1 15s and 7s season.