AMES, Iowa – Chase O’Connell turned to walk away from a conversation about his Iowa State University career and there, hanging from his backpack, were two tags commemorating an undergraduate internship at NASA.
They’re terrific souvenirs of O’Connell’s Iowa State experience. But, as O’Connell prepares to graduate this week, they’re an incomplete record of his university highlights:
- He co-taught an honors course for freshmen, mostly to offer some peer advice to launch them into the program.
- He went to South Korea for a study-abroad experience. The country wasn’t on his list of places to study, but course schedules aligned and so he jetted off to Seoul. He was the first electrical engineering student Iowa State had ever sent to the program, so it was a major trial run for O’Connell and for Iowa State.
- He followed up on a tip from his parents, Casey and Debi O’Connell, and landed another overseas experience, this time as a research intern for a German university. He studied data visualization of the underground networks controlling mining robots.
- He completed an honors research project to update the technology for a two-week lab assignment in Computer Engineering 4880, “Embedded Systems Design.”
- When he had time, he worked with Iowa State’s Robotics Club.
- And he took a scuba diving class during his NASA experience, learning from an employee of the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory, the big pool where astronauts get a feel for what it’s like to float around in low gravity.
A common starting point for all those experiences? O’Connell’s willingness to ask, “Why not?”
The coolest projects
Chase O’Connell. Larger photo. Photo by Christopher Gannon.
O’Connell, who’s 23 and a 2020 graduate of Johnston High School in suburban Des Moines, wasn’t thinking Iowa State for his college years.
But in-state tuition was a big draw. So was the College of Engineering. And so were the potential opportunities to study abroad and learn beyond classrooms.
He arrived on campus thinking he’d study science, technology, engineering or math.
“I chose engineering because I like problem-solving,” O’Connell said.
He narrowed that to an electrical engineering major with a computer science minor.
Why?
“Because I was thinking, ‘Which type of engineering will give me the opportunity to work on the projects I find the coolest.’” (See video above.)
There’s not much cooler than the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
O’Connell’s co-teacher of that first-year honors course – Sarah Stewart, a senior from North Liberty who’s studying mechanical engineering and is a veteran of three internships through the NASA Pathways program – encouraged O’Connell to apply for a NASA internship.
“He’s very studious,” Stewart said. “He’s very passionate about electrical engineering. And I knew he’d be a great fit for an internship like this. What they care about the most is people with passion who want to learn.”
So, O’Connell applied and advanced to an interview while he was studying in South Korea. He was sick on interview day. He remembers it wasn’t an easy conversation. He wasn’t offered an internship.
He applied again. Interviewed again. And landed an internship at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, working on a robotics project. Another internship followed, this one with a computer networking project.
As O’Connell looks ahead to graduate school (he’s in the application process, no announcements yet), he’s already been accepted into a NASA internship program for graduate students.
His big takeaways from his NASA work?
- “Problem-solving and engineering solutions always take longer than you expect or initially plan for.”
- “At a setting like NASA, you can learn from everybody.”
Calm, systematic and determined
During these last weeks as an Iowa State undergraduate, one of O’Connell’s final assignments was to present his honors research project.
“I chose to do a project that’s very technical,” O’Connell said.
It involves what’s known as an FPGA (a field programmable gate array), technology related to programmable hardware applications.
O’Connell is working with Phillip Jones, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, to update hardware for a two-week lab assignment involving video camera processing.
“In Chase’s case, in order to update the lab to use current technology, he basically needed to rebuild this lab from scratch, which is quite the undertaking,” Jones said. “I was impressed with Chase’s calm, systematic and determined attitude and mindset as he worked through completing the lab redesign,” Jones said.
The project fit O’Connell and his philosophy of getting involved, near and far:
“I wanted to take advantage of the opportunities that Iowa State provides,” he said. “I wanted to really just make the most of my college experience. So honestly, I think going here was probably the best possible decision for where I could go for my undergraduate degree.”
And …
“I wanted to meet as many cool people as I could.”
