Education
How I've prepared myself for
the field of engineering.
West Virginia University
B.S.M.E and B.S.A.E in four yearsI graduated with a Bachelors of Science in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering with an area of emphasis in Astronautical Engineering from West Virginia University in May of 2022. I graduated with a GPA of 3.59.
University Accreditations
West Virginia University's Aerospace Engineering and Mechanical Engineering programs are both ABET accredited. WVU is also a R1 university, which is the highest ranking of research universities.
Engineer in Training
It is one of my lifelong goals to become a Professional Engineer, and in the May of 2022 I took an important step towards completing this goal by passing the Mechanical Fundamentals of Engineering Exam.
Work
Experience
How I've developed my skills
in professional settings.
Finite Element Method Teaching Assistant
West Virginia UniversityFall 2021
During the fall semester I worked as a teaching assistant for a finite element method course at WVU. My roles for this job are to help teach students about finite element analysis both analytically and with simulation software. I helped students apply ANSYS Mechanical APDL and ANSYS Workbench throughout this course.
Student Worker
West Virginia UniversitySummer 2021
During the summer semester of 2021 I worked as a student worker where I prepared a microgravity experiment for development in the fall semester. This entailed doing experiments of apparatus' to determine optimal design choices with the microgravity experiment and payload moving into the Fall semester. More in depth information on my involvement with microgravity research can be seen in the projects section.
Mechatronics Teaching Assistant
West Virginia UniversitySpring 2021
In the Spring of 2021 I worked as a teaching assistant for a mechatronics course in which I led labs teaching students everything from SOLIDWORKS, to Arduinos and electronics. Additionally, I graded lab reports for this class and helped the students gain necessary engineering skills that would be used throughout their classes and projects.
Manufacturing Engineering Intern
Magnet-Schultz of AmericaSummer 2019, Summer 2020, Winter 2020, Winter 2021
I have had 4 seperate manufacturing engineering internships at Magnet-Schultz of America in Westmont, Illinois. One of the most interesting projects I had there was when I worked on part presentation, stocking/floor/WIP storage, and material flow for a high-volume project. I also got to develop skills by creating work instructions, making FMEA’s, performing tolerance stack-up analysis, assisting in the tool design process, working with welding equipment and programming welding schedules, completing metadata transfer, and ordering equipment. One project during my first internship there that I am proud of is when I used excel and VBA to create a look-up tool to save time for both engineers and assembly workers by quickly displaying key information about parts such as location and products used on.
Projects
Projects I've applied my engineering skills on.
Microgravity Research
I have been on West Virginia University’s Microgravity Research Team since the Spring of 2020, and have worked on 2 separate projects funded by NASA’s Flight Opportunities Grant. The first project in 2020 involved Direct Ink Writing titania-based foam in microgravity, and I was involved in the automation and data acquisition of this project. Microgravity Research consists of developing an experimental payload to test the behavior of certain functions in a simulated microgravity environment, in this case a parabolic flight. The team is currently pending publication on the results of this experiment in the scientific journal Nature.
The second project for 2021 consisted of a cold spraying experiment and two foam spraying experiments. The cold spray experiment showcased additive manufacturing and repair abilities in microgravity by accelerating copper microparticles to supersonic speeds using a converging diverging nozzle to weld copper to an aluminum substrate using kinetic energy alone. The foam spray experiment shows behavior of deposition of titania-based microemulsions when sprayed through an atomization nozzle for applications such as sprayable radiation shielding.
I had a leadership role on the team in 2021 and conducted the experiment in 2 parabolic flights, completing all 60 parabolas. On this team, I was responsible for payload fabrication, experiment development, and automation / data acquisition. For payload fabrication, this entailed designing, machining, and assembling most of the payload as well as managing a team of people to best use our resources. For experiment development, this included designing a supersonic converging-diverging nozzle for the cold spray experiment, designing an atomization nozzle for the foam spray experiment, and optimizing parameters for functionality across the experiments. For automation, I completely automated the functions of the payload such that the only human intervention needed was switching out substrates. This automation was made using python and arduino and it includes precise valve actuation, stage traverse, solenoid actuation, and data acquisition from several sensors.
This research continued and both experiments were optimized and flown again in the Spring of 2022.
BAJA
Mechanical Engineering Capstone
My mechanical engineering capstone senior design project consists of building, testing, a car to compete in a BAJA SAE competition. Personally, I'm on the Data Acquisition subteam, which involves collecting engine RPM, wheel RPM, GPS location, atmospheric conditions, area of interest temperatures, and a user interface for the driver.
Spacecraft Design
Aerospace Engineering Capstone
The first part of my aerospace engineering capstone was a satellite design project that involves designing a spacecraft that can measure atmospheric drag. I was personally in charge of Attitude Control and Determination Systems for this project and involved with the mission design.
The second part of this capstone consisted of developing a Portable Utility Pallet (PUP) as an entry into the NASA RASCAL competition. I worked with the Mission Planning & Analysis subteam to determine mission criteria and scientific experiments for the mission in conjunction with hardware development on the PUP.
NASA L'SPACE
Workforce Development Program
In the Spring of 2021 I was involved in NASA L'SPACE, which is a Workforce Development Program whose purpose is to prepare students for careers with employers like NASA that have a specific and a rigorous methodology of development. The deliverable for this project is a Preliminary Design Review (PDR). I worked as Project Manager with a team of over a dozen people remotely to design a secondary payload of a Venus probe that would measure specific atmospheric conditionn. The complete PDR from the project can be seen below.
Hobbies
Some things I'm passionate about outside of my professional life.
Hiking and Backpacking
One of my favorite parts about studying in West Virginia are all the great hiking trails throughout the state. I've grown to love hiking over the past couple years and I typically spend most of my free weekends hiking. Some of my favorite places to hike are Cooper's Rock, Audra State Park, and Baker's Ridge. I also really enjoyed going on a backpacking trip at Dolly Sods in the Spring of 2022.
In the Summer of 2022 I was able to travel to Europe and greatly enjoyed hiking various trails in the mountains of Northern Spain.
Music
Music is one of my favorite forms of artistic expression and it's something that I've always loved. I have been collecting vinyl records and cassette tapes since I was 16. One of my favorite records that I have is a replica of the Voyager Golden Record.
Lifting and Nutrition
I've been lifting weights since I was very young and it's something that I've grown more passionate about as time goes on. I competed in a powerlifting competition in 2017, and two weightlifting competitions in 2017 and 2018. I consider my best lifting accomplishment to be deadlifitng 515 pounds.
Contact
Me
Contact me by email at matt@mattgswanson.com