The rear upright transmits all tire loads into the chassis. I performed finite element analysis on the assembly to locate regions of stress concentration and regions carrying negligible load.

Applying DFM and DFA principles during the redesign kept the part machinable in the team's shop. The revised upright is 5% lighter and maintains a 1.75 safety factor.

I also designed the brake line routing and associated mounting hardware, and I am currently developing test plans and generative design studies for additively manufactured titanium components driven by measured load cases.

A rover troubleshooting workstation designed to NASA ground-support equipment conventions: it must traverse gravel to reach the vehicle and remain legible in direct sunlight. The riveted 5052-H32 frame was developed through structural analysis of rivet loading and gusset design.

The cart carries a telemetry display and status LEDs driven by a Raspberry Pi and rides on gravel-rated casters, allowing it to be deployed wherever the rover is located.

I also developed an AI-assisted tool-scanning system that traces tool profiles and generates custom foam-insert layouts, and I managed procurement for a build of more than 100 items.

Over four competition seasons I worked on the manipulator subsystem, the arm and end effector responsible for acquiring and placing game pieces, with a team of eight or more students from concept through assembly.

I machined more than 30 components on the CNC router and lathe, which required designing parts that I would personally fixture and cut within a six-week build season.

These robots won a World Division Championship, two Texas District Championships, and seventeen regional and district events over that period.

The Guinness World Records mark for the thinnest folding chair is 1.68 cm, held by Gaetano Callocchia. Teddy Garza and I have filed an attempt to surpass it with a prototype measuring under 1.27 cm when stowed, defined as the minimum distance between two parallel planes enclosing the folded chair. Whereas the current record holder's design draws on Mondrian, ours is driven by material limits: the thinnest structure that still functions as a chair.

Every component nests rather than stacks: the legs and seat retract into one another so that the folded state contains no gaps or overlapping volume. The base material, aluminum or wood, is selected on strength-to-thickness ratio, and the hinges and fasteners are custom-machined flush with the panel faces so that the laminate thickness alone determines the measurement. The chair must also stand unaided when unfolded; achieving thinness is the simpler half of the problem.

Verification is the other half. Guinness requires the chair to support at least 80 kg for ten seconds with no part of the occupant touching the ground, filmed alongside the weigh-in, together with a qualified surveyor's measurement, two independent witness statements, and a complete materials and manufacturing breakdown. The attempt is scheduled at the University of Texas at Austin for August 2026, following stress testing and witness scheduling.

The front corner is the current focus. Steering loads make it a distinct problem from the rear, so I am rebuilding the load cases from logged vehicle data rather than reusing those developed for the rear.

I am conducting generative design studies in nTOP for additively manufactured titanium and comparing the printable geometry against what can be machined in house.

The next milestone is the test plan: fixture design, instrumentation, and a static pull test to validate the model before any component is installed on the vehicle.

Results and drawings will be added as the 2027 vehicle progresses.

Genesis is UT Austin's student-run venture fund. I am organizing its next event as a startup makeathon in which competing teams design and 3D-print a functional product prototype rather than presenting a slide deck. Bambu Lab hardware and print resources are integrated into the format from the outset.

The competition spans three events over several weeks rather than a single weekend. Every team first pitches a concept and business case, and only the ten strongest advance to the build stage. This structure maintains judging quality and directs prize and materials funding toward the teams most likely to produce a strong result.

I authored the full program: the format and timeline, the Day 1 workshops on market validation, pitching, and CAD, separate rubrics for the concept round and the final build, the budget, and the proposal inviting Bambu Lab to serve as anchor sponsor. Prizes are awarded to every member of a winning team and teams are capped at four members, so the cost of any prize structure is known before it is committed.

Finalists build in the university makerspace's print lab rather than on personal or borrowed printers, since printer access is the most likely point of failure during the build week.

Proposal submitted to Bambu Lab · dates, rooms, and prize structure to be finalized

Day 2 — concept cut

Day 3 — final