Employee Spotlight - Stone

This week we are spotlighting Stone, a current grad student at MSU and one of our software engineers. Stone shares a bit about his background and how he became interested in software engineering - 

“When I started college, I was actually on the pre-med track and planned to major in biochemistry. As I got further into it, I realized becoming a doctor wasn't the path I wanted to pursue, so I started exploring other options. I'd always enjoyed math and science, and electrical engineering really caught my interest. What I liked most was that it seemed challenging. It wasn't just about math or solving equations, it also required a lot of creativity. A lot of the time, the problems you're working on involve things you can't actually see, like electrical signals or control systems, so you have to think through how everything interacts and come up with creative solutions to open-ended problems. That combination of analytical thinking and creativity is what really drew me to engineering, and it made me realize there was always more to learn, which inspired me to continue on and earn my master's degree. I am motivated by curiosity. I really enjoy taking something that I don’t fully understand and learning how it works. I think it's very rewarding to look back at something that seemed overwhelming at first and to realize how much you’ve actually learned by working through it.”

Earlier in the year, Stone tackled fine-tuning our camera vision systems - “One project I enjoyed working on was developing an automatic exposure algorithm for the cameras used on the aircraft. What made it interesting was that it wasn’t just a software problem. It involved control theory, image processing, and understanding how the camera hardware behaved. I found it really rewarding to develop and test a method that was both responsive and stable, and then see it integrated into the aircraft's imaging system where it could make a meaningful impact”

We appreciate Stone’s dedication to learning and developing new systems to make aviation a safer field. Thank you Stone for sharing!