Co-Leads

Niccolo Cymbalist

Niccolo Cymbalist is a Ph.D. student in Aeronautics at Caltech, working on supersonic mixing and combustion under Professor Paul Dimotakis. He received his B.Eng in Aerospace and Mechanical engineering from Concordia University in 2011. While at Concordia he founded Space Concordia, a student led satellite design team which won the 2012 Canadian Satellite Design Challenge (the prize being the launch of the winning satellite). He is an avid sailor, having sailed across the North Atlantic from the US to Europe.

Hayden Burgoyne

Hayden Burgoyne is a Ph.D student in Space Engineering at Caltech researching granular metamaterials for high-velocity impact protection.  He works with Professor Guruswami Ravichandran at Caltech and Professor Chiara Daraio at ETH Zurich and splits his time between the universities.  He received his B.S. in Engineering Sciences from Harvard.  He is a NASA Space Technology Research Fellow and has recently done research at NASA Langley.

Technical Lead

Jay Qi

Jay Qi is a Ph.D. student in Mechanical Engineering at Caltech researching flow control and estimation using computational fluid dynamics under Professor Tim Colonius. He received his B.S.E. in mechanical and aerospace engineering from Princeton University in 2012 and is a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow. He was also a participant in the 2013 Caltech Space Challenge. [Personal website]