Byron Francis ’24
Byron graduated in 2024 with a degree in Electrical Engineering. He works on the Gemini subteam, utilizing the Paraview platform to create 3D visualizations of auroral processes.
Maia Kawamura ’23
Maia graduated in 2024 with a BE electrical and computer engineering. She started working in the lab in 2020 on featurizing satellite data and ground imagery for auroral arc reconstruction, and is now working on updating the pip and shield electronics boards.
Former Undergraduate Students
Anaisa Newyear Rowe ’26
Anaisa is a ’26 pursuing a major in physics, who began working in the lab in winter 2023. She was a part of the rocket group, with her focus on Arduino coding.
Katherine Pommerening ’25
Katherine is a ’25 who began working in the lab in winter 2022. She is pursuing a major in either computer science or physics, and is a part of the rocket group. Right now, she is working on data visualization from two rocket missions; LAMP and CREX-2.
Megan Bond ’24
Meggie began working in the lab in the fall of 2020. She is a ’24 and plans to major in physics.
Grace Kwon ’23
Grace is a ’23 who joined the lab in winter 2020. She is a physics major who worked on rocket data analysis. She is now a graduate student at the University of Michigan.
Caitlin Lynch ’22
Caitlin is a member of the class of 2022 pursuing a B.E. in Engineering Sciences and a minor in Astronomy. She started in the lab during the fall of her sophomore year. Caitlin helped redesign the brackets that attach the PIPs to the main rocket payload using SolidWorks CAD software and calculate orbital data and statistics for the Planet Labs and ARCS constellations using STK and FreeFlyer software.
Ted McManus ’22 ( Former Student)
Ted is a member of the class of 2022, and he is pursuing a double major in Music and Physics. He joined the lab in the fall of 2019, and he is working on comparing reconstructed data from virtual spacecraft to “real data” from simulated ionosphere. The whole goal is to create a really high resolution simulation of the ionosphere in a particular region of interest which can then be compared to reconstructed data from spacecraft.
Vico Lee ’24
Vico joined the lab in the fall of 2020, and is a ’24. He is planning on majoring in computer science and mathematics. His work right focused on finding a suitable metric for matching maps.
Ruosi Zhou ’14
William Voigt
William is a dual degree engineering student from Colby. He is a ’12 there, majoring in Physics and Philosophy, and a ’13 at Dartmouth, getting a mechanical B.E. William has worked for the lab the past two summers and is working there during this academic year. He has worked on a large number of projects for both GreenCube and RocketCube, and was involved in working on tracking and prediction software for GreenCube, in addition to co-leading the GreenCube recovery team.
Alannah Linkhorn ’12
Sean Currey ’11
Matt Chong ’11
Peter Horak
Peter joined the team in Spring 2011.
Thomas Whalen
Tom joined the team in Winter 2011.
Patrick Yukman
Patrick became involved with the lab in the fall of 2010, and was in charge of updating this website as well as working on the Squidbee radios for GreenCube 5.
Amanda Slagle
Amanda began work with the lab in the winter of 2009 as a WISP intern. She primarily worked on electronics for GreenCube, including calibration, testing, and troubleshooting for the magnetometer, accelerometer, and temperature sensors. She also helped design the LED circuit being used as a flashing light source for GreenCube III.
Jon Guinther
Jon began working in the lab in the fall of 2009. Over the summer, he served as the recovery team leader-in-training, and he was involved in ordering materials for the lab, “stuffing” boards and trays with the necessary electronics for missions, and making mechanical modifications to the cubes when necessary.
Max Fagin
Max started working with the lab in the fall of 2008. He graduated from Vassar College with a double major in physics and astronomy, and pursued a BE in Mechanical/Electrical Engineering at Thayer. Max worked on communication systems for the GreenCube Payload. Some of his other tasks included payload machining and fabrication, maintaining the video cameras which fly on GreenCube, and serving as the mission videographer. Max spent 2 weeks at the Mars Analog Research Station (MDRS) in Utah where he hoped to use GreenCube as a tool to investigate wind patterns over the Mojave desert, as well as to study the possible use of balloons for deployment on manned Mars missions.
Casey Bradshaw
Louis Buck ’10
Louis started working in the fall of 2008. He used a UNH design to build a control table for vacuum chamber particle detector testing. He also did kitting for RENU and troubleshooting for GreenCube. Louis was previously lab manager.
Tommy Du ’10
Tommy joined the lab in late fall 2008. He did data analysis for ROPA and edited C++ code for the Helios program.
Claire McKenna ’10
Claire started in the winter of 2008.
Umair Siddiqui ’10
Umair began working for the Lynch group in the fall of 2007. Umair worked on building a collimated electron source based on a UNH design for particle detector testing and space plasma physics experiments. He also worked on the design and launch of Greencube 2.
Dave Heinicke ’09
Dave began working in the late spring of 2008.
Amanda Scull ’09
Amanda worked in the lab from winter to spring of 2006. She began by updating an inventory of parts needed to build up electrical boards for ROPA, and then she ordered and sorted all the parts into kits for their respective boards. Once all the parts were in, she filled the boards with the parts and in some cases soldered them in place.
Rachel Hochman ’08
Alexander Crew ’08
Beginning in the summer of 2006, Alexander helped produce drawings of the detectors for the ROPA project. He modified the necessary drawings in AUTOCAD to create the new HeBig detector. Additionally, he did some cleaning of parts and other miscellaneous tasks.
Alexander.B.Crew@alum.dartmouth.org
Parker Fagrelius ’08
Beginning April 2005, Parker helped draft and design a new ion detector for the ROPA rocket as well as some drafting for the microwave source for Elephant and other miscellaneous parts. In addition to this, Parker populated boards for CASCADE and DUST, and digitally tested the new ion detector.
parker.a.fagrelius@alum.dartmouth.org
Lauren Blum ’07
Beginning in April 2006, Lauren was involved in the DUST project, testing and populating boards. She also assisted in the fabrication and overall assembly of the boxes and ion detectors for the ROPA rocket, and worked on SCIFER-2.
lauren.blum@alum.dartmouth.org
Kelsey Helland ’07
Kelsey started working in the lab in September of 2006, just in time to help put the final touches on ROPA. His primary job is to order electronic and mechanical components, and to manage inventory; Kelsey also helps out with machining parts, when necessary.
Kelsey.J.Helland@alum.dartmouth.org
Chris Schooley ’06
Chris worked primarily with the fabrication, inspection and testing of the circuit boards, and also helped to design a new ion detector by running computer simulations. Chris tended to do a lot of odd jobs here and there, writing up procedures, disassembling the old detectors and cleaning them, looking for components online, etc. He took this job mainly because it allowed him to stick around for the summer, but he really started liking what he was doing, and he especially liked the really cool people he worked with, Ralph and Kevin and Kristina; He has learned a lot from them. This was a sweet job, so he wanted to continue as long as school work let him.
Shaunak Mewada ’06
Shaunak worked as a research assistant in the Lynch Rocket Lab, building up the inventory and parts system for the new lab. Shaunak worked with graduate student Kristen Frederick-Frost to order and inventory the parts for the electronics for the SERSIO sounding rocket mission.
shaunak.m.mewada@dartmouth.edu
Brenda Zarate’05
Brenda worked on analysis of data from the FAST (Fast Auroral Snapshot) satellite. She learned to use IDL and the FAST satellite data analysis libraries, and collected a statistical database of auroral activity on the Earth’s dayside. The results of this work were presented at the Fall 2003 American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco, and Dr Lynch was in the process of writing it up as a journal paper.
Sarah Jones ’04
Sarah spent the summer populating and testing circuit boards for the CASCADES project as well as ordering parts and handling some accounting. She also did some updating of the Lynch Rocket Lab website.
Alexander Bruccoleri
Alexander was in the process of building a static rocket motor test stand. The purpose of the stand is to enable experimenters to fire rocket motors on the ground and record data such as force versus time from them. The stand was built from Aluminum and it used a commercial Load Cell and data acquisition system to transmit data to a laptop. This project moved on two fronts; the technical design and construction of the stand and the bureaucratic front gaining permission from various Dartmouth and Hanover offices.
Nathan Loewke
Nathan is an undergraduate at UCLA. He worked here full time in the summer of 2008 building filament electron guns.
Ryan Michney
Ryan spent the summer as a research assistant for the physics department. Ryan ordered things for the department and soldered occasionally, but spent most of the time working on algorithms which were used to interpret data for a Dartmouth satellite. Ryan learned to use a programming language considered to be indispensable to many scientists and engineers. Having had almost no programming knowledge to begin with, Ryan found himself beating my head against the wall from time to time. However, solving a succession of actual physics problems and occasionally learning material ordinarily above Ryan’s level was very satisfying. It was a job Ryan highly recommends to anyone who enjoys figuring things out and wants a narrow excuse to refer to themselves as a rocket scientist.
Erika Sogge
Erika joined the Lynch group in January 2005 and began doing work to prepare for the March 2005 CASCADES launch. This website was her main project for most of the winter. She added daily and weekly updates about the launch. In addition, she created the real time spaceweather page that was used to predict good nights for launching. She also worked with the Montshire Science Museum on an exhibit about the CASCADES project.
Jonathan Tullis
Jonathan helped draft the plans for the electron and ion detectors that went up in CASCADES. He also played a role designing the new BAGEL detector. He ordered parts, created a digital inventory, managed some paperwork, kitted parts for the boards, and soldered the parts onto the boards. In addition, he helped prepare the instrumentation and boards for flight by cleaning and assembling them.
jonathan.g.tullis@dartmouth.edu
Scott Andrews
Shayan Ghosh
Sarah Markus
Former Graduate Students
Graduate Students
Philip Fernandes
Lisa Gayetsky
Lisa joined the Lynch group in the fall of 2008. She studied density fluctuations in plasma sheaths in non-ideal conditions.
Meghan Mella
Meghan was a graduate student who has been working with the Lynch group since 2006. She did data analysis for the SCIFER-2 sounding rocket. Meghan also worked on the buildup, integration, and launch of the CASCADES-2 rocket. In her free time, she likes to build, test, and calibrate particle detectors. Meghan’s website is here.
Phil Bracikowski
Graduated 2010 —
Phil began working for the Lynch group as an undergraduate in the summer of 2006. He worked on adapting greencube to make it applicable for use with rockets. Phil was also involved in the DUST project.
Kyoung-Joo Hwang
Graduated 2006 — Now a post-doc at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics
Kyoung-Joo started to work with Kristina in 2003 summer, and graduated in 2007 summer. Kyoung-Joo worked on the structure, evolution, and boundary conditions of auroral downward current regions using FAST data. It included FAST E_perp (perpendicular electric field to the geomagnetic field) idl code development, studies for different potential structures associated with different ionospheric and magnetospheric conditions and responses in the auroral downward current region.
Kristen Frederick-Frost
Graduated 2007 — Now a post-doc at the University of New Hampshire.
Joining the Lynch group in 2002, Kristen was quickly caught up in the preparations for the January 2004 launch of the SERSIO sounding rocket. Much of her time was spent assembling and calibrating the particle detectors for that mission. Traveling to Ny-Alesund in Svalbard, Norway for the launch in the middle of January was one of those experiences that helped affirm Kristen’s distaste for fish. She had a great time and analyzed the particle data. She also designed a vacuum system that gave us the ability to test our hemispherical electrostatic analyzers in a low energy plasma environment. She tried to diversify her attention and avoid the well deserved title of ‘lab rat’ by participating in educational activities/exhibits in local museums.
Kristen.frederick-frost@unh.edu
Robert Michell
Graduated 2007 — Now a post-doc at the Southwest Research Institute.
Robert was a graduate student working for Kristina Lynch, on the CASCADES sounding rocket experiment. He worked on building and testing the control electrons for the particle detectors. He also worked on the construction and calibration of the particle detectors themselves, and the measured data after the launch.