Fall 2026 Adventures

 

I got engaged. This makes me very happy. 

I went on a hike. That made me happy.

I went to a few concerts and saw some friends. Also happy things.

Fall 2026 is going well and steady. It's a lot of effort, but the gain is worth the time.

Updates coming to my personal website. Figuring out how to improve the style.

Climbed Mt. Tripyramid

 

On Friday evening, I camped in the Sandwich range wilderness with my friend Noah. We had a nice trip and got to eat some freeze dried food. The Mt Tripyramid slide on the north peak was particularly tough. The sun came up just as we began the scramble so we got a eyeful of UV beams with the falling dust. Two more NH 4000s under my belt. This trip is in anticipation for our CO hiking trip. We are going to the Mt of the Holy Cross soon. My first 14er. 

Second most difficult hike in the Whites, beaten only by South Twin.

Summer Camp and Making Stuff at Formlabs

 

I spent last weekend at Akwissasne in upstate NY. It was a wonderful time with friends. Some highlights:

• 6 different boats on the lake all at the same time
• Sitting on the sailboat with Coyote while she skillfully steered it
• Eating good food in the middle of nowhere
• Playing some fun board games with buds
• Catching up with friends who flew across the country to be there

I am so grateful to those who enabled us to be there and foremost Coyote for everything she does. The summer camp experience and getaway was enriching to our souls. A couple days away clears the mind for new ideas to arise.

Metal printing cool stuff as per the new normal. More interest in heat exchange and specialty components.

The views of the lake were stunning almost every day. Only one day of rain struck us.

Paddling my kayak while an inflated loon chases me

In the Core of the PhD, Always Looking Forward

 

I feel that I am in the center core of my PhD, or maybe just past it now. I am working on a few concurrent papers and a couple of them should be published (at journals) this year hopefully. The mechanisms and foams will be made. It is only a matter of time. 

The first photo above is a deepfake of Brett and I. I was a bit surprised to find that people are warming up to this sort of stuff as much as they are. I am not used to it yet maybe. Or perhaps I would rather see real videos huh. The second photo is of Coyote and I's future kitchen. We are moving in together and I am looking forward to having our own special place. It will be cozy and nice.

Third, a photo of friends and I at Stowe VT ski resort. We got away during NU spring break for a couple days to relax and recover. Good times all around and some positive memories. My skiing has gotten a lot better since I started.

Lastly some Tiffany style lamps. My mom, Brother, and Buzz arrived in town this weekend. We saw the Charlie Berens show downtown and enjoyed one another's company.

Life is good. I will be at FormLabs this summer to learn more about SLS systems, help their development, and gain key skills for my future career as a mechanical systems engineer and scientist.

Featured PhD Student at Northeastern College of Engineering

 

I am happy to find that I was featured in the Northeastern College of Engineering website as a PhD Candidate creating change through innovation. There is gratefulness in my heart for the folks at the office who reached out to me and did an interview piece on the work I do with the Transformative Robotics Lab. It's a real pleasure to get the chance to talk about our work and how we hope to change lives for the better through it.

https://coe.northeastern.edu/news/creating-change-through-innovation/

In other news, life is going well and I got to go skiing last weekend and skating yesterday at the Frog Pond. The holidays are almost here and I am rushing to get data to process while away in MI. So this blog post is short so I can now run off to the machine shop :) 

Presented at BU Materials Day 2025

This is the view from the 17th floor of that blocky building that BU built two years ago. It's an interesting skyscraper and gives nice views over the Charles river and the Shawmut peninsula generally. I gave a 'lightning talk' at the BU materials day presented by Prof. Brown. It was a great event and I learned a lot about where engineers are advancing materials from a wide range of backgrounds. There were computer scientists, mechanical engineers, aero, electrical, chemists, biologists, and everything else in between there.

Last weekend, my mom, stepdad, and stepbrother were in town. I showed them the interesting side of Boston and ended up stopping by this nice exhibit on East Campus. It was well put together. Slightly offputting to see the student center bathed in so much bright white light and fresh trimmings. Looks a bit more artificial, but maybe I got too used to the 90's aesthetic that stuck around that building a bit too long.

 

Planting a Flag for QJoint

 This is vague intentionally. 

My advisor and I have used math also presented in this article: https://institutions.newscientist.com/article/2499647-mathematicians-have-found-a-hidden-reset-button-for-undoing-rotation/

We did so to produce a new kind of slipring. It does not rely on sliding contacts. It will change robotics and continuous rotation systems.

Flagstaff to Tucson and a few things in between

 

Last weekend was a great trip to Arizona. Coyote and I went to Flagstaff to see a friend of hers married and then we travelled to Tucson to see some of my family. Along the way, we got to hike in the Cactus Forest of the Saguaro National Park. Unfortunately the Cactus Forest Dr was closed due to broken gov. But we saw the cacti from the Broadway trailhead. Life is good in general. I am going to Atlanta next week... so much travel. I am looking forward to a few boring weekends ahead and some time to decompress a bit.

My perceptions on AZ are much different now, after seeing both Flagstaff and Tucson in this season. There is a great variety of life in the state and I hope to find a trip back to this corner of the country soon.

Finished the Pemigewasset Loop

 

Last weekend, I hiked the Pemigewasset Loop in New Hampshire's White Mountains. It's over 30 miles and I summited 9 mountains over 4000 ft in elevation. I could not have done it without my pals Ben and Noah. We camped on Friday night and slept in a shelter on Saturday night. The weather was perfect. Sunny and low winds. Temperatures were 60s in the day under the sun and 30s at night. The stars were magnificent.

Last year, Noah and I tried to finish the loop counter-clockwise but we were stopped by strong winds and I was thrown onto some rocks. We were welcomed by the great folks at the Galehead Hut of the AMC. This year, we got redemption and even summited West Bond.

I am well on my way to doing the 48 White Mountains of 4000+ feet in elevation. 

This trip tested me and I am happy to say that we overcame the challenge. It's a great thing for one's spirit to set a challenge and overcome it. I forgot about the whole world when I was sweating out my face and pushing over rock after rock. Some of the best treatment I have received.

I will be back next year for perhaps even more distance, nights, and camp food. I only hope that I'm not sleeping next to a snorer.

Wedding in the Family

 

Last week I was in Austin, TX, for an academic conference and the weekend before that I was at my mom's wedding. Only one more wedding to go this year in Arizona and then maybe a wedding break for a bit. Over the course of life, it seems that the rate of weddings, births, and passings is non-random in one's own attendance. People spend a lot of time with those who are in a similar age of life and this plays a part. I suppose that's why some people jokingly refer to the late twenties or early thirties as the era of weddings and babies relative to teenage years or one's fourties. But as far as I know, there is no perfect, externally set time time to have a kid, get engaged, or die. It's a rate of occurrence that is circumstantial and related to the pace of human life itself. Our actions and reactions to these events is tied to the age and time at which they occur. That is my takeaway from doing something, anything, at a certain time and age. 

As for my own academic journey and career, time is of the essence. There is always another project to consider and opportunity cost to evaluate. If you are not weighing one project against many others, maybe you need to seek out more ideas to compare against.

The castle that the wedding took place at.

Brett and I at the Solid Freeform Fabrication poster session last week

Wedding in the Immediate Friend Group

 

Kat and Conrad are working together now. It was a great weekend and so many little moments packed into such a short time. A lot of life got put into a finer perspective this weekend. We are all growing older into another chapter of life, through our twenties and growing ever more mature. I'm so glad my speech was well received and I was able to be a good Best Man for Conrad and Kat.

So many things were perfect and reminded me of their shared interests. The ceremony was sweet and personal in the best way and now those two are off to Europe for a honeymoon. 

Here is an important part of my speech about Conrad

"""

He is a fundamentally kind person and I have always sought to surround myself with more people like him. Because he builds up the people around him, and that is something I deeply respect and do not forget about him.

–

I met Conrad after we both arrived at MIT. He and I lived down the hall from each other and one of my earliest memories of us being friends happened around 3 AM one night, over a month after we arrived on campus. — That night, we found ourselves with some of our new pals at an IHOP on the North Shore of Mass eating as many pancakes as we could, after skinny dipping in the cold Atlantic ocean. If we could jump together into that near freezing water, joke around, and then fight to see who could eat 12 large pancakes, we could get along, be friends, and we could push through MIT together. He made me feel, for the first at MIT, like I was part of a group. And that is an amazing skill.

"""

It was icing on the cake that Coyote could be there too and she is doing so well in a new job.

The venue hall and ceremony courtyard

Another Swiss Trip plus Italy

 

I went to Switzerland again last month to pick up Coyote and come back to the US with her. She finished her thesis with flying colors and afterwards, we took the train into Italy. It was a wonderful trip with some great travelling partners. We stopped by Lucerne on the way and I got a great view of the city.

Italy was a blast. We got to travel with one of C's friends and her Italian boyfriend. Obviously, it is great to travel with someone who knows the country and language. The cathedrals, night time walks, food, and everything else was a dream. I will be returning at some point. I liked that we were able to stop by some of the lesser crowded points of the Tuscan countryside. Agriturismos are the way to visit that part of the country. I learned all 20 regions of Italia and now I need a reason to eventually see them all.

After the trip, Coyote sent me on a fun quiz to visit the statues of Geneva. Here is Gandhi's.

Progress Post Quals and Summer 2025 Excitement

It's June again, which means I turn another year older. June is one of my favorite months. Usually it means a shift from routine work to more experimental work. From educative and directly productive efforts, to more adventurous tasks.

A month ago, I heard that my qualifying exam at Northeastern was accepted without conditions. This was very great news to hear. I was very happy at the moment. I can switch now from that educative preparation to exploring the use cases of two core technologies from my lab at Northeastern, the Transformative Robotics Lab. In this effort, I attended the New England Manipulation Symposium at MIT CSAIL last week. Brett and I went over some of our work.

A lot of folks there used a sensor called a GelSight, to measure surface deformation. Here is an image of my Claddagh ring under that sensor. 

And here is an image of my 3D printed insoles after being worn down. Not all technology works without fatigue forever. I am improving the methods of producing 3D printed foam goods this summer for potential commercialization.

But, in the weekends I still find time to go on little adventures. Mountain Osceola has nothing on me and my hiking buddies. 

Switching from educative to adventurous a bit this June. I am looking forward to this summer, despite the greater concerns, I will be with my good folks along the way.