Graduate Student of the Month - Jason Christopher
Jason earned a B.S. in mechanical engineering from the United States Air Force Academy in 2007. While at the Academy, he interned at the Los Alamos National Laboratory researching deflagration properties of explosive materials. After the Academy, Jason earned an M.S. in mechanical engineering from Rice University with his research focused on computational modeling of fluid-structure interactions of NASA parachutes and arterial blood flow.
Upon graduation, he moved to Vandenberg Air Force Base, California where he worked as a range modernization and sustainment engineer acquiring telemetry systems to support space launch and missile testing.
Most recently, Jason completed an assignment as an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering on the faculty of the United States Air Force Academy teaching statics and mechanics of materials, thermodynamics, and fluid mechanics. There he discovered the fun in teaching and thinking of ways to communicate engineering topics in comprehensible ways.
Currently Jason is co-advised by Professors Peter Hamlington and Greg Rieker where he works to shed insight into effective methods to combine experimental data (i.e. laser measurements) with computer simulations (i.e. ).
He is a major in the US Air Force and a licensed Professional Engineer in the state of Colorado. Outside of the office Jason enjoys hiking, mountain biking, eating delicious food, traveling, and, his favorite activity, spending time with his wife, Shannon, and toddler sons, Noah & Rowan.
