Experience

MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research

• United States
• Education
• 1 - 100 Employee

• Senior Mechanical R&D Engineer

  • Nov 2023 - Present

  Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States



VALT Enterprizes, Inc.

• United States
• Defense & Space
• 1 - 100 Employee

• Senior Mechanical Engineer

  • Jan 2022 - Nov 2023

  Presque Isle, Maine, United States • Served as Sr. Engineer for the research, development, and manufacture of hypersonic air breathing and rocket propulsion flight vehicles, for a $6M Department of Defense - Missile Defense Agency funded project. • Designed and analyzed flight vehicle components, performing FEA and CFD simulation using commercial (ANSYS Fluent) and NASA provided (VULCAN-CFD) software. • Selected, programmed, and integrated COTS electronic components (flight computers, Arduino® hardware and peripherals)… Show more • Served as Sr. Engineer for the research, development, and manufacture of hypersonic air breathing and rocket propulsion flight vehicles, for a $6M Department of Defense - Missile Defense Agency funded project. • Designed and analyzed flight vehicle components, performing FEA and CFD simulation using commercial (ANSYS Fluent) and NASA provided (VULCAN-CFD) software. • Selected, programmed, and integrated COTS electronic components (flight computers, Arduino® hardware and peripherals), and perform pre-flight hardware in the loop tests. • Participated to flight testing and performed post flight data analysis. • Generated monthly and quarterly reports for DOD customer, internal reports and memos, and engineering drawings, and presented them verbally in meetings and phone-conferences. Show less



TA Instruments

• United States
• Appliances, Electrical, and Electronics Manufacturing
• 400 - 500 Employee

• Sr Mechanical Engineer/Development Engineer

  • Aug 2019 - Dec 2021

  New Castle, Delaware, United States • Served as Sr. Engineer in the thermal instrumentation R&D team for the development of new instrumentation from ‘back of the napkin’ drawings to a final product. • Involved with the improvement and enhancement of the current product line (DSC, TGA, TMA, SA). • Involved with the design and development of high-precision, customized analytical instruments with $50K-$135K price, from concept through production and testing. • Led the design, development from concept to market of the… Show more • Served as Sr. Engineer in the thermal instrumentation R&D team for the development of new instrumentation from ‘back of the napkin’ drawings to a final product. • Involved with the improvement and enhancement of the current product line (DSC, TGA, TMA, SA). • Involved with the design and development of high-precision, customized analytical instruments with $50K-$135K price, from concept through production and testing. • Led the design, development from concept to market of the Discovery TMA 450 RH. This instrument allows for controlled relative humidity experiments over both wide temperature and RH ranges. • Performed multi-physics FEA and CFD simulation for complex electro-thermal-mechanical systems using commercial software (ANSYS Mechanical, Maxwell, FLUENT). • Finalized drawings, prototyped parts, assisted initial testing on new instruments. • Generate reports, specifications, memos, and engineering drawings, and present them verbally in meetings and phone-conferences. Show less



Piasecki Aircraft Corporation

• Aviation and Aerospace Component Manufacturing
• 1 - 100 Employee

• Project Engineer

  • Nov 2017 - Aug 2019

  Essington, PA, USA • Served as Project Engineer for the full scale demonstrator for the ADAPT program, a multimillion US ARMY funded project. • Served as technical lead and Assistant Program Manager for the design and development of a scaled demonstrator for the ADAPT program. • Participated in all the phase of new air vehicles design, development, performance analysis, and proposal writing for piloted and unmanned experimental aircraft and rotorcraft. • Generated computational meshes and performed CFD… Show more • Served as Project Engineer for the full scale demonstrator for the ADAPT program, a multimillion US ARMY funded project. • Served as technical lead and Assistant Program Manager for the design and development of a scaled demonstrator for the ADAPT program. • Participated in all the phase of new air vehicles design, development, performance analysis, and proposal writing for piloted and unmanned experimental aircraft and rotorcraft. • Generated computational meshes and performed CFD analyses using open source mesh generators and CFD codes (OpenFOAM). The latter included monitoring convergence of both steady state and transient simulations. • Compared CFD results to wind tunnel and flight test data, in order to validate and calibrate the analysis performed. • Supervised and lead a team of 4 engineers and mentored less experienced engineers. Show less



University of Pennsylvania, Department of Physics and Astronomy

• Postdoctoral Researcher

  • Jun 2014 - Nov 2017

  Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States • Developed mechanical, thermal, and electronics designs for remote sensing instruments using 3-D cad software. • Served as technical lead for the design and development of systems for BLAST-TNG, a $6M+ NASA funded project. • Technical liaison between NASA-CSBF and the BLAST experiment. • Maintained and monitored operations for ACT-Pol, a $2M+ telescope at 17,000ft in Chile. Value ~$30K/night. • Maintained relationships with vendors, and responsible of direct purchasing of equipment… Show more • Developed mechanical, thermal, and electronics designs for remote sensing instruments using 3-D cad software. • Served as technical lead for the design and development of systems for BLAST-TNG, a $6M+ NASA funded project. • Technical liaison between NASA-CSBF and the BLAST experiment. • Maintained and monitored operations for ACT-Pol, a $2M+ telescope at 17,000ft in Chile. Value ~$30K/night. • Maintained relationships with vendors, and responsible of direct purchasing of equipment for $100K-$200K/year. • Supervised and lead a team of 4 researchers. Show less



University of Pennsylvania

• United States
• Higher Education
• 700 & Above Employee

• Postdoctoral Researcher

  • Aug 2013 - Jun 2014

  Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States • Designed and developed a microfluidic technique to synthesize mono disperse microbubbles. A patent was filed. • Water permeability studies of lipid membranes in collaboration with J&J, Rutgers University, and the MIT.



University of Pennsylvania, Deptartment of Physics and Astronomy

• Research Assistant

  • Aug 2008 - Jul 2013

  Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States • Worked on a fully-automated flying robotic telescope observatory, BLASTPol, a $5M+ NASA funded project. • Successfully deployed the improved design of structural, thermo-mechanical, and electronics components. • Maintained the cryogenic receiver operations, bolometric detectors, and relative readout electronics. • Supervised integration, flight, observation, and coordinated the deep field recovery operations in Antarctica. • Performed quantitative analysis of datasets in IDL and… Show more • Worked on a fully-automated flying robotic telescope observatory, BLASTPol, a $5M+ NASA funded project. • Successfully deployed the improved design of structural, thermo-mechanical, and electronics components. • Maintained the cryogenic receiver operations, bolometric detectors, and relative readout electronics. • Supervised integration, flight, observation, and coordinated the deep field recovery operations in Antarctica. • Performed quantitative analysis of datasets in IDL and Python. • Conducted experiment design, testing, and characterization within a collaboration of top scientists & engineers. Show less



Harvard University

• United States
• Higher Education
• 700 & Above Employee

• Visiting Scholar

  • Jun 2007 - Aug 2008

  Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States • Exploited droplet-based microfluidic techniques to develop high-throughput assays. A patent was filed. • Studied and optimized flow dynamics applied to microfluidic devices for single particle encapsulation in droplets.



National Research Council - Nanoscience Insitute

• Laboratory Assistant

  • Apr 2006 - Mar 2008

  Lecce Area, Italy •Developed expertise in multilayer optical lithography, and manufacture of microfluidic devices. •Performed basic studies on fluid dynamics in micro channels.