UNM Engineering Student to Work for NASA

George Gorospe

George Gorospe can hardly con­tain his enthu­si­asm when he talks about work­ing for the National Aero­nau­tics and Space Admin­is­tra­tion (NASA). This spring he com­pleted his Bachelor’s degree in Engi­neer­ing and is now on his way to the NASA lead­er­ship Academy. 

He and other stu­dents will travel for the next 10 weeks, learn­ing about cur­rent mis­sions and meet­ing with com­pa­nies that work with NASA. He then heads to the NASA Ames Research Cen­ter in San Jose, Calif. to begin work as a research engineer.

Gorospe is fas­ci­nated by robots. In an Elec­tri­cal and Com­puter Engi­neer­ing class last spring on mobile autonomous robots he worked with other stu­dents design­ing a con­trol sys­tem to allow a small quad-rotor heli­copter to maneu­ver in Pro­fes­sor Rafael Fierro’s robot­ics lab. 

In this video below, he demon­strates their research.

Gorospe received the MEP Out­stand­ing Lead­er­ship Award from the School of Engi­neer­ing which cited his work as the pres­i­dent of the Amer­i­can Indian Sci­ence and Engi­neer­ing Soci­ety (AISES) and pres­i­dent and founder of the first Robot­ics Club in the School of Engi­neer­ing.  He also received a hand­made star quilt from one of his advi­sors in Engi­neer­ing Stu­dent Ser­vices.  The quilt hon­ored him as a per­son the com­mu­nity looks up to and is a reminder of his Native Amer­i­can heritage.

Gorospe grad­u­ated from the Santa Fe Indian School in a small high school senior class of 50 stu­dents before com­ing to UNM. Once at the uni­ver­sity he seized every pos­si­ble oppor­tu­nity, includ­ing a sum­mer course offered to Native Amer­i­can stu­dents by NASA. 

In the audio inter­view below, he talks about how he man­aged to turn a sum­mer learn­ing oppor­tu­nity into a chance for his dream career.

My Sum­mer at NASA

Gorospe says a big part of his suc­cess came from the strong sup­port sys­tem at the School of Engi­neer­ing Stu­dent Services. Engineering Stu­dent Ser­vices Direc­tor Steve Per­alta and Senior Aca­d­e­mic Advi­sor Lour­des Garcia-O’Keefe worked closely with him as he applied for var­i­ous schol­ar­ships and internships. 

He says, “They really helped me stay on track when I got distracted. I spent so much time there work­ing on appli­ca­tions and essays and they were always great.”  Gorospe says he would like to attend grad­u­ate school in the future, but first he wants to learn every­thing he can at NASA Ames.