Award-Winning Grad is JPL-Bound

Five years after entering the University of Colorado Boulder, BS/MS graduate Thomas Green is headed to the Jet Propulsion Lab, leaving behind a strong legacy as an award-winning student, lead senior projects teaching assistant, and advocate for STEM education, not to mention being part of the team that earned $30,000 in a NASA competition. It’s an impressive finish for a student who started his college career as an accounting major.

"I originally applied to be an accounting major because I enjoyed math. A few weeks before classes started freshman year I realize there were more fun ways to use math and ‘space’ is pretty cool. Since then I've never looked back," said Green.

He's never looked back career-wise, but has reached back to help students coming up behind him. As the senior project teaching assistant, he worked mentoring all of the 2015-2016 senior design teams.

Green has also given his time to benefit even younger students.

"I try to spend time volunteering to teach high school students about STEM career paths so they do not make the same mistake I nearly did," he said.

A focus of those efforts have been the American Astronomical Society's STEM-SCAPE (Student Career Arcs to Professional Engineers) events, in which high school students meet with aerospace professionals and college students and compete in tabletop space missions.

Thomas's efforts and dedication have earned him a number of awards, including 2016 Distinguished Senior from the aerospace department, as well as outside recognition from organizations like Aviation Week, which named him to their 20 Twenties list, an annual recognition of 20 of the most promising engineering students in the United States.

The awards are deserved, according to Trudy Schwartz, a senior instructor in aerospace engineering sciences.

"What sets Thomas Green apart is his commitment and dedication to his work. He's very competent in many different aspects of engineering analysis, mathematics, verbal and written communication, and especially software. He was my go-to person for writing several of our Matlab software GUIs," said Schwartz.

Over the last year, Green has spent much of his time on the NASA CubeQuest Centennial Challenge, as part of a graduate project team developing a cube-sat capable of operating near and beyond the moon.

"We managed to place fourth in a ground competition this spring. This won us $30,000 and a chance to continue on in the challenge. In a few years once the cube-sat is launched, we will be competing to win $1,350,000," said Green.

That is something Green will have to watch from afar. As a new BS/MS graduate, he won’t be able to participate. His focus will still be skyward, however, as he begins his career as a professional engineer at JPL.

"I will be learning to be the Tactical Downlink Lead for the Curiosity Mars rover. This means I will be monitoring the health and safety of the rover as well as leading testing with Curiosity's 'twin' at the JPL Mars Yard to solve any problems that occur," he said.