Recent Kennesaw State University students Micah Holston, Jack Smith, and Jonathan Ridley spent their summer interning at the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The internship provided them with hands-on experience in national defense applications across engineering, computer science, and physics.
Each student worked on separate projects during their time at AFRL. They credited their academic preparation at KSU for helping them succeed in the laboratory environment.
“My experience this summer has absolutely tied in nicely to what I’ve done at KSU,” Smith said. “The things I saw in my textbooks and research, I got to see them come to life. So, it’s been really cool.”
Holston, who recently earned a bachelor’s degree in physics and also holds a bachelor’s in political science from KSU, completed his second summer internship at the lab. He first learned about the opportunity while conducting research with Jeremy Gulley, a former associate professor of physics at KSU who had previously worked with AFRL. Holston plans to pursue a doctorate in plasma physics at Auburn University this fall. He described his experiences as pivotal for his career direction.
“Last summer was a formative experience for me across the board because I wasn’t sure what physics would look like as a day-to-day job. This summer honed my vision, focusing me on the DoD science niches which best suit my diverse interests in physics, politics and military history,” said Holston. “I connected with multiple agencies interested in funding me through my PhD, including the Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, the Missile Defense Agency, Space Futures Command, and Sandia National Lab. Since I was a kid, I wanted to work in the military science sector to help ensure the world continues in the right direction. Rather than just reading history, a military scientist can craft it.”
Ridley is majoring in computer science and worked for AFRL’s Directed Energy Directorate. His time there shifted his career goals from academic robotics research toward broader scientific computing applications.
“Since coming here, the image of what I wanted to do has been shattered into a million pieces and spread all over,” he said.”There’s so much to do, and right now, I’m just exploring everything I can. I know the general scope of where my interests are colliding is under the umbrella of scientific computing, like how the Human Genome Project merges computer science with biology. Miracles can happen when using computer science to aid in other fields and I want to be a part of that because I think it’s beautiful. I believe that I will be able to design better algorithms by thinking like the practitioners of other fields but also abstractly understanding the constructs in their given domain.”
Smith contributed to work within AFRL’s Space Vehicles Directorate by modeling space weather effects on materials used for spacecraft and satellites. He has earned both bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mechanical engineering from KSU and is currently pursuing an additional bachelor’s degree in physics.
“A lot of the work I do is fabricating prototypes through manufacturing design,” said Smith, who also minored in nuclear engineering and mathematics. “The courses I took at KSU are relevant, especially more in the master’s side. As far as how materials interact with each other, different chemical processes and bonds, and then some of the physics stuff, more of the electronics side like electromagnetism has been pretty relevant to the stuff I’ve worked on here.”
