Lysandrou receives aerospace industry fellowship

Padraig Lysandrou, B.S. ’18 (electrical and computer engineering, ECE) and an early M.Eng. student in mechanical and aerospace engineering at Cornell was recently awarded an inaugural Matthew Isakowitz Fellowship, which connects exceptional current college juniors, seniors and graduate students with paid summer internships in the exciting field of commercial spaceflight, as well as with notable aerospace leaders for mentorship.

Upon completing the summer internship, the Fellows will remain among an elite group of alumni who will have the opportunity to continue to network with the program, their Fellow peers, assigned mentors and future Fellows, on the path to becoming future space icons.

Lysandrou will be interning at SpaceX this summer, with a focus on avionics and guidance navigation and control (GNC). Working in the aerospace industry isn’t new for him, however. He’s interned in the aerospace industry every summer since his freshmen year—at SpaceX’s Cape Canaveral, Florida branch as a launch engineer and again at their Hawthorne, California branch as an RF engineer. He’s also interned at Blue Origin working on RF communications. Since his freshman year, Lysandrou has been involved with Professor Mason Peck’s Space Systems Design Studio and was a member of the Violet student project team.

This summer he’ll be in Seattle working for SpaceX on Starlink, a constellation of satellites that they are developing to supply internet access to the world. He’ll be working on attitude control technology and sensing, which will include developing algorithms and working with sensors and electronics to understand the dynamics and attitude of the satellites.

“Up until now, I’ve always been guided to do the traditional framework of academia, go on to grad school, that sort of thing,” said Lysandrou. “But I’m more industry driven. Receiving this internship which has a strong entrepreneurial focus and having a mentor who is a seasoned entrepreneur in the commercial aerospace industry tell me that I have good ideas, that I could go out in the world, do some of this stuff, and try to make the world a better place, is really valuable advice.”

Find more information about the Matthew Isakowitz Fellowship Program at: www.matthewisakowitzfellowship.org/about