Michael Sola

Michael Sola was born and raised in Clearwater, FL. He earned his B.S. in Engineering Physics from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University Daytona Beach with a focus on Space Systems Engineering and a minor in mathematics. During his undergraduate degree, he was a Ronald McNair scholar with research focusing on modeling stellar atmosphere of rapidly rotating stars. He also completed an internship at JPL where he modeled and observed the atmospheric dynamics of Jupiter. After graduating, he enlisted in the navy and became a Special Amphibious Reconnaissance Corpsman (SARC)/ Special Operations Independent Duty Corpsman (SOIDC) serving with 3D Reconnaissance Battalion and 3D Marine Raider Battalion serving for 10 years. During his service, he completed an M.S. in Commercial Enterprise in Space from the Florida Institute of Technology. As a part of his transition, he completed two internships with the Air Force Research Lab working on machine learning for space competitive games and cislunar space domain awareness. He started his Ph.D. at CU Boulder in the Fall 2023 and was awarded the NDSEG Fellowship. His research interests include spacecraft pursuit/evasion, astrodynamics, estimation, and decision making with applications to space warfare, operations, strategy, and policy.