Benjamin Chamberlin — Aerospace Engineer
BUILDING
Remus on Ostia — static fire, simulated
Engineer & Builder
I'm Benjamin, an aerospace engineering student at Georgia Tech, and most of my time goes to two obsessions that look unrelated until you work on both: rockets you can put your hands on, and software that learns to fly without any hands at all.
The first obsession became NEAL Aerospace, a rocketry group a few of us founded in 2024 because the fastest way to learn propulsion is to be responsible for some. Two years later it's a 15-person engineering team with $30,000 in backing, a hybrid rocket motor in development, and a static-fire stand we designed and built ourselves. I lead structures: the motor casing, the stand that holds it, and every load path in between.
The second started with a semester training RL flight policies on the Autonomous Drones VIP team, then carried into the Aerospace Systems Design Laboratory, where I built training infrastructure for AFRL-sponsored multi-agent ML research. The two obsessions turn out to be the same discipline in different clothes: a feed system and a reinforcement-learning agent both fail exactly where your requirements were incomplete. Test procedures taught me to distrust my assumptions; watching agents exploit my reward functions taught me the same thing much faster.
The two obsessions are finally merging. In Fall 2026 I'm launching Artificial Intelligence in Aerospace, a new organization of 25+ engineers building the Voron drone project: real airframes, digital twins, reinforcement learning, EO/IR perception, and mesh-networked flight.
Technologies
Selected Work
Three builds, documented the way they happened: the reasoning, the trade-offs, and what each one taught me.
Remus
A nitrous-fed hybrid motor built around a 3D-printed fuel grain, made to be fired and understood.
SolidWorks · Ansys Mechanical · Ansys Fluent
Read the project
Ostia
The modular static-fire stand that holds the motor, takes its thrust, and records the burn.
SolidWorks · Ansys Workbench · DAQ
Read the project
Voron
An autonomous drone system built end to end, from airframe and digital twin to the policy that flies it.
RL · Digital Twins · EO/IR · Mesh Networking
Read the projectExperience
Leadership and research roles across propulsion hardware, autonomous systems, and student life at Georgia Tech.
2024
2024
NEAL AerospaceCo-founder / Structures Lead
Atlanta, GA · 2024 – Present
A few students who wanted to build a rocket became a 15-person engineering organization with $30,000 in funding and vendor support that I helped secure. As structures lead I own the hardware that holds the engine: the motor casing, the static-fire stand, and the analysis that clears both for our first static fire. Co-founding it taught me the part no class covers: making propulsion, structures, avionics, and ground support agree on interfaces before metal gets cut.
- Motor casing & static-fire stand design
- FEA, load paths & safety margins
- Static-fire test requirements
2024
2024
VIPAutonomous Drones — VIP
Vertically Integrated Projects · Fall Semester
My first pass at autonomy was a semester training PPO reinforcement-learning policies for 3D guidance, navigation, and control in a multi-agent simulation: pathfinding, coordination, and target engagement. One semester of watching agents exploit my reward functions changed how I write requirements everywhere else.
- PPO policy training for 3D GNC
- Reward shaping & convergence tuning
- Multi-agent simulation
2025
2025
ASDL ResearchUndergraduate Research Assistant
Aerospace Systems Design Laboratory · 2025 – 2026
The spring after my VIP semester I joined ASDL, a separate AFRL-sponsored project in the same orbit. I built the scaffolding the lab's multi-agent ML research stands on: a modular Common Research Model framework and a Python/JSON configuration pipeline, so agents trained with RL, NEAT, or DAgger could be evaluated on identical cruise-missile defense scenarios instead of one-off setups. That chapter is wrapped for now; the framework stayed with the lab.
- Reinforcement Learning, NEAT, DAgger
- Python / JSON scenario pipeline
- Multi-agent simulation & analysis
2025
2025
Georgia TechResident Assistant
Georgia Tech Housing · 2025 – Present
A different kind of systems work. A residence hall of 100+ people produces incidents, conflicts, and 2 a.m. problems that no procedure fully anticipates. You learn to de-escalate, to document, and to make decisions with incomplete information while staying calm. It's the same muscle a test conductor uses, trained on humans instead of hardware.
- Community leadership for 100+ residents
- Conflict resolution & mentorship
2026
2026
AI in AerospaceFounder & President
Artificial Intelligence in Aerospace · Launching Fall 2026
Founding a new student organization built around one question: what does it take to own a drone autonomy stack end to end? I lead a team of 25+ engineers on the Voron project: building drones from hardware up, training reinforcement-learning policies against digital twins of each airframe, running perception on EO/IR video the fleet collects itself, and linking vehicles over a self-healing wireless mesh network.
- Voron autonomous drone program, 25+ engineers
- RL training pipeline & digital-twin simulation
- EO/IR perception & sensor integration
- Radio comms & mesh networking
2027
2027
EducationBS Aerospace Engineering
Georgia Institute of Technology · GPA 3.71 / 4.0 · May 2027
2028
2028
EducationMS Aerospace Engineering
Georgia Institute of Technology · May 2028
Skills
A hands-on toolkit spanning design, simulation, propulsion, and software: from CAD models to static-fire test data.
CAD & Design
SolidWorks part & assembly design, GD&T, and design for manufacturing.
Simulation & Analysis
Ansys FEA & Fluent, CFD, and MATLAB / Simulink modeling and trade studies.
Propulsion & Fluid Systems
Feed-system architecture, P&ID, injector sizing, hydrostatic testing, and PDR/CDR.
Software & ML
Python, NumPy, SciPy, and reinforcement learning for autonomous systems.
Test & Instrumentation
LabVIEW, DAQ, load cells, thermocouples, test planning, and V&V.
Manufacturing
CNC machining, lathe, waterjet, and 3D printing for rapid fabrication.