Colin is a third-year PhD student in his sixth year overall at CU Boulder. He joined the Mechanical Engineering master’s program way back in Spring 2012, a full semester before his eventual advisor, Dr. Peter Hamlington.
After having some fun designing and testing a CubeSat at the Colorado Space Grant Consortium, Colin joined Dr. Hamlington’s Turbulence and Energy Systems Laboratory in May 2013 and had some fun simulating a rotating detonation engine. He had far more fun than a student should be allowed, so he stuck around for the PhD and still hasn’t filed any paperwork for his Master of Science.
In between running simulations on supercomputers that consume hundreds of kilowatt-hours of power and whole racks of hard drive space (take that, experimentalists!), Colin gives back to the department which has given him so much by helping plan GEARRS and over-sell prospective students on the wonders of math (see his GEARRS 2016 “I Love Math” award). Colin served as the GEARRS fundraising chair in 2015 and 2016, and provided general advice and manpower in 2017 (see his GEARRS 2017 “Takes Out the Trash” award).
In his spare time, Colin greatly enjoys cooking for friends, such as baking quiches and frittatas for GEARRS breakfast, roasting the annual way-too-large butterball turkey at Friendsgiving, and preparing ceviche for the Super Bowl Party. He also enjoys road biking, hiking, boating, beer festivals, and reading Wikipedia. That last one is not a joke… seriously… ask his wonderful labmates Kat, Nick, Scott, Ryan, Jason, Steven, Caelan, Sam, Sid, Olga, Allison, and Shelby.