Blue Origin GNC Graudate Internship

I had the chance to own a really cool controls-heavy project on the upper-stage engine team at Blue Origin. I built the team’s first high‑fidelity Simulink model of an electromechanical actuator driving a rocket engine valve, starting from detailed motor current control (field‑oriented control and current/velocity loops) up through the outer position loop that ultimately sets thrust‑controlling valve commands. I also modeled the full plant dynamics (electrical, mechanical, and key nonlinearities), ran step/sine/chirp campaigns to tune and validate the controller, and structured everything for auto‑generated C and eventual FPGA deployment so it could plug into hardware tests down the line.

Big shoutout to my mentors, Mirza Baig and Tyler England, who were fantastic project leads and gave me a lot of trust and ownership while still keeping me pointed in the right direction. I walked away with a much deeper understanding of motor control and cascaded control, which has been super helpful for my robotics work as well!