Graduate EDUCATION AND RESEARCH Volume 7, Issue 1
Summer 2017 Newsletter
ALUMNI UPDATE: CATCHING UP WITH RICHARD Richard Henry graduated with his Master of Science in Engineering in Electrical and Computer Engineering in May 2015. An American growing up in Spain, Henry has a unique perspective on education. We asked Henry a few questions about his experience at Parks and how that has contributed to his post-collegiate
Q What attracted you to Parks College of Engineering, Aviation, and Technology?
A Growing up, I was fascinated by the things surrounding me, coloring
outside the lines, asking myself fundamental questions and exploring the places I wasn’t allowed to go. My goal after high school was to attend an American college, however, living in Madrid at the time made it quite challenging. With the invaluable help of my parents, they brought to my attention that Saint Louis University had a Madrid Campus with a solid engineering program and plenty of opportunities for growth in the electrical and computer engineering fields. One aspect that really attracted me to Parks was the fact that courses, especially for the core classes (Junior and Senior) were typically fewer than 20 students per class. I honestly appreciated that type of setting since it allowed students to easily engage with the professor during and after class, and more importantly they empowered students with the opportunity to engage in relevant class discussions. Tell us about the work you conducted at Parks. Throughout my years as an undergraduate (May 2013) and graduate student (May 2015) at Parks College I have had the privilege to work on two distinct research topics. As an undergraduate student I spent two years as the power co-lead of COPPER (Close Orbiting Propellant Plume and Elemental Recognition) cube satellite at the Space Systems Research Laboratory under Dr. Michael Swartwout’s supervision. I was tasked to ensure that enough power was generated through the solar arrays and batteries to meet the life span of the mission as well as providing accurate power level to each subsystem. Later, during my graduate time, I developed my thesis on “In Flight Image Processing on Multi-Rotor Aircraft for Autonomous Landing” having Dr. Srikanth Gururajan as my advisor and with the assistance of Dr. Kyle Mitchell. In a nut shell, my thesis focused on performing onboard image processing to provide guidance to the flight controller and safely ensure an accurate landing to a defined marker on the ground. How was the transition from graduation to professional life? As a fun fact, I graduated and got married on the same day. Yes, despite it being the best day of my life, it was quite stressful. My two cents, do not perform those two life changing events on the same day. Lesson learned. Back to the main question. After graduation I started working for MasterCard as a Security Engineer. I am responsible for the design and implementation of security engineering requirements, standards, and architecture review for the security aspects of projects.
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