Research Journeys

Torin Clark, From Undergraduate Researcher to Faculty Mentor

Hanna Nordwall — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 16:35:00 +0000

Torin Clark, From Undergraduate Researcher to Faculty Mentor Hanna Nordwall Wed, 08/19/2026 - 10:35

Torin Clark

Torin Clark was a sophomore in aerospace engineering at the �Ǹ�Թ� when he first got a real look at what researchers actually do. It pointed him in a direction he had not expected.

In 2006, Clark applied to CU �Ǹ�Թ�'s Discovery Learning Apprenticeship (DLA) program and began working alongside a faculty member and a graduate student in the aerospace department. The research topic itself was not what drew him in. It was the nature of the work.

"What I found is that I really, really loved the process of doing research," Clark said. "Answering questions that weren't known, trying to solve problems, troubleshooting things, figuring out what the next important question we should be asking is."

Before the DLA, Clark was doing well in his classes but had little sense of what lay beyond them. Research filled in that picture.

"I was taking classes and doing well, but I just didn't know what research was all about or that it was a career path people could go into," he said. "I got to see behind the curtain of what professors do on a daily basis, what grad students do, and all of the interesting questions they were working on."

Clark continued his research beyond the DLA program, returning for a second summer and eventually building his senior project on the work he had started as an apprentice. Along the way, he co-authored a conference paper and presented it, giving him something concrete to point to when he began applying to graduate schools.

"I think it was quite critical," he said of his undergraduate research experience. "If you don't have research experience and you're applying to graduate school, you might have straight A's and be wonderful in the classroom, but people are looking for prior research experience. Not just 'I kind of followed someone around.' They want to see an extended period of undergraduate research experience that has led to something concrete."

Clark was admitted to graduate programs at MIT and Stanford, completed a PhD and a postdoctoral fellowship, and eventually returned to �Ǹ�Թ� as a faculty member, which had been his goal for some time. CU �Ǹ�Թ�'s strength in bioastronautics was a draw, as was the opportunity to work with undergraduate students again.

"I knew that working with undergraduate students was an important part of why I wanted to be a professor," he said.

Clark is now an associate professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences, affiliated with the biomedical engineering and robotics programs and a principal investigator in the Bio Astronautics Laboratory. His research focuses on understanding the challenges humans face in space and developing solutions to help astronauts perform well in extreme environments, with applications that extend to pilots of high-performance aircraft as well.

In his ten or so years on the faculty, Clark has mentored more than 70 undergraduate research assistants. Some have gone on to graduate school, others to postdoctoral fellowships, industry positions, or careers in academia.

Clark is straightforward about the practical value undergraduate researchers bring to his work. Much of what his lab does involves human subject experiments, which require multiple people to run. That does not map neatly onto a model where a single PhD student works independently.

"Having undergraduates involved with the research is really valuable," he said. "A lot of those human subject experiments just require multiple people to perform them."

Undergraduate researchers have also helped the lab stay productive during gaps in external funding. When a project winds down but a useful line of experiments remains unfinished, an undergraduate can carry that work forward, sometimes to a first-authored publication.

"Often the undergraduate student who started to work on something will continue and then publish a paper where they're the first author," he said.

The programs have also made it easier to pursue early-stage work. When the lab needs pilot data to support a grant proposal, undergraduate researchers can take that on without pulling a PhD student away from their funded project.

"It has expanded both the inflow and the outflow of our research program," Clark said.

Most of the lab's external funding comes from NASA, the Department of Defense, and other agencies focused on human performance. Those budgets tend to leave limited room for undergraduate support, which is where DLA and SPUR come in.

"Programs like DLA and SPUR really enable us to leverage the funding we do have to get undergraduate students involved and perform the research we are proposing," he said. "Having that cost-sharing is really helpful."

For Clark, the impact is deeply personal. The same type of opportunity that introduced him to research years ago now serves as a pathway for the next generation of engineers and scientists.

Looking back, it is easy to trace the arc of his career—from a curious undergraduate seeking direction, to a graduate student exploring new questions, to a professor advancing human spaceflight research and mentoring future innovators. What began as a single undergraduate research opportunity became the starting point for a lifetime of discovery.

And now, through the students he mentors, that cycle continues.

Torin Clark was a sophomore in aerospace engineering at the �Ǹ�Թ� when he first got a real look at what researchers actually do. It pointed him in a direction he had not expected.

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Student to Steward: How One Research Apprenticeship Built a Career — and a Lab

Hanna Nordwall — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 16:34:23 +0000

Student to Steward: How One Research Apprenticeship Built a Career — and a Lab Hanna Nordwall Wed, 08/19/2026 - 10:34

Nicholas Clements

Nicholas Clements was a junior in mechanical engineering when he somewhat accidentally discovered his life's work.

He had applied to CU �Ǹ�Թ�'s Discovery Learning Apprenticeship (DLA) with an eye toward biomedical engineering, drawn to the field's intersection of science and human health. Professor Shelly Miller, who studies indoor air quality and infection control, convinced him that her research on ultraviolet light disinfection of bacteria was close enough to what he had in mind.

"It wasn't," Clements now admits with a laugh. But somewhere in the process of studying what floats in the air around us, he found himself genuinely hooked.

"Getting exposure to air quality and infection control really led me to a topic that I wanted to pursue," he said. "Whether that was in research or in industry, I didn't really know at the time. But it was a way to dive into something I found out I really liked."

Staying to Go Deeper

What began as a summer apprenticeship became a graduate degree. When Professors Miller, Mike Hannigan, and Jenna Milford secured an EPA grant the following year, Clements had the opportunity to pursue a PhD. He took it.

He is now a Professional Research Assistant at CU �Ǹ�Թ�, managing both the Building Energy Smart Technology Center and the Larson HVAC Lab, two research facilities housed within the same department where he once worked as an undergraduate apprentice.

"It really was a turning point," he said of the DLA program. "Totally."

The Other Side of the Table

Having spent his career on both sides of the undergraduate research relationship, Clements has developed a clear-eyed view of what these programs offer, as well as what they require of mentors.

He now regularly brings DLA and SPUR students into his lab, which runs exclusively on undergraduate research assistance. He is thoughtful about the distinction between working with undergraduates and graduate students, noting that the scope of projects and level of supervision need to be calibrated accordingly.

"You kind of have to know how to work with undergrads," he said. "But once you give them the right direction, they're capable of doing quite a bit."

His SPUR student from the previous year, he says, was among the most impressive undergraduates he has ever mentored. She completed and co-authored a full research paper, and the lab hired her through the summer to keep her work going. Clements is now actively helping her find a position in New York City, where she hopes to launch her career.

"Undergrads can be vital to keeping things going," he said. "They can fill in gaps where graduate students might want to spend their time doing something more intensive, and they can skill up on things that will be important in their careers — experimental design, data analysis, technical writing."

Why Funding Matters

Clements is also frank about the practical stakes of program funding. The cost-sharing structure of SPUR and DLA, he explains, directly shapes how many students his lab can bring on in a given year.

"It typically doubles the number of students we can hire," he said. "Being able to go from one to two or two to three is really helpful for us."

The SPUR program, with its full-time summer commitment, is his favorite of the two. The longer runway, he says, allows students to move past orientation and into substantive, and sometimes remarkable, work. On the day of this interview, one of his current students was in the lab learning to solder copper pipes together as part of building an educational platform for the center.

"We wouldn't be able to hire him without the Dean's support," Clements said. "Having that cost split is really helpful."

For Clements, the programs are not just a pipeline of labor. They are, in many ways, a reflection of his own beginning, a reminder that the right opportunity, offered at the right moment, can set an entire career in motion.

Nicholas Clements was a junior in mechanical engineering when he somewhat accidentally discovered his life's work.

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Learning Never Stops: A Grad Student's Journey from Mentee to Mentor

Hanna Nordwall — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 16:33:15 +0000

Learning Never Stops: A Grad Student's Journey from Mentee to Mentor Hanna Nordwall Wed, 08/19/2026 - 10:33

Jacob Spagnolli

Jacob Spagnolli had a plan when he started at CU �Ǹ�Թ�. Get an aerospace engineering degree. Graduate. Find a job at a big aerospace company. It was a reasonable plan. It just wasn't the one that stuck.

Now in his seventh year at CU (spanning an undergraduate degree, a COVID-era extension, and two years of graduate school) Spagnolli is finishing a master's in bioastronautics while managing research contracts with some of the largest names in the defense and aerospace industry. The detour, as it turns out, was the destination.

"I found a passion in research" he said. "It allowed me to get my hands on things that otherwise I would not."

The pivot began simply enough. Spagnolli was a junior sitting in Dr. Dennis Akos' electronics course when Akos mentioned, almost in passing, some of the research happening in his lab. Spagnolli was captivated. After class, he walked up and asked if he could get involved.

Akos pointed him toward CU �Ǹ�Թ�'s Summer Program for Undergraduate Research (SPUR) program. With support from both Akos and Director of UG Research, Sharon Anderson, Spagnolli secured a spot in the lab that summer. He never really left.

"He liked me enough to keep me around," Spagnolli said, "and I've been working there ever since."

The lab focuses on GPS, GNSS, and broader positioning, navigation, and timing research, work that runs across a wide range of contracts with partners including Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, the Air Force Research Lab, and Boeing. For Spagnolli, the work sits at what he describes as "the razor edge" of human technological knowledge — the kind of research too novel or too risky for most companies to pursue on their own.

Like many students stepping into a research lab for the first time, Spagnolli encountered imposter syndrome early. He is now philosophical about it.

"When you first start in research, you feel like you know a lot less than you do," he said. "The research you're doing is the cutting edge of human knowledge. The people who share your knowledge base might number less than a thousand on the entire planet."

What got him through it, he says, was the culture of the lab itself, researchers who were genuinely enthusiastic about their work and generous with their time.

"It's completely normal to have that imposter syndrome at first, and when I say at first, I could really mean the first three, six, eight months," he said. "At some point it clicks, and you start to feel comfortable."

Now on the other side of that experience, Spagnolli mentors the undergraduates who cycle through the lab. He draws an analogy that surprises him a little every time he uses it: scouting.

An Eagle Scout, Spagnolli remembers the way knowledge flowed in his troop, not primarily from scoutmasters down, but from older scouts to younger ones, peer to peer. Graduate research, he says, works the same way.

"I didn't stop learning when I started teaching; I just got to learn more, learn more in-depth, learn things in different ways," he said. "I feel like I'm learning at a much accelerated rate."

It is a philosophy that shapes how he thinks about the value of undergraduate research more broadly. The programs, he argues, are not just resume builders. They are environments where students discover what they are actually capable of, and where mentors are quietly sharpened by the act of explaining what they know.

Connections That Last

Perhaps the most concrete evidence of research's value, in Spagnolli's view, is what happened when he started looking toward graduation. The contrast with his earlier job-search experience as an undergrad is stark.

"In undergrad, I had gone through tens of dozens of applications, sometimes with only one response," he said. "Going from that, where you feel so isolated, alone, cold, to somewhere where someone says, 'I really appreciate what you can do, I really want you on with us,' is a very big refresher."

At least one of his lab's industry partners, he says, has already asked when he graduates and requested his resume. He did not have to ask.

After completing his master's in May 2026, Spagnolli continued to work in the lab but plans to step into industry rather than pursue a PhD, at least for now. A doctorate, he says, is never fully off the table, given his love of teaching and mentorship. But for the moment, he is ready to take what he has built and use it.

"Knowing that you have the skills to succeed, knowing where to turn if you feel like you don't, and having a network that will support you," he said, "is immensely important when it's done right."

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From classroom to NASA: How one summer of research launched a career in human spaceflight

Hanna Nordwall — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 16:31:01 +0000

From classroom to NASA: How one summer of research launched a career in human spaceflight Hanna Nordwall Wed, 08/19/2026 - 10:31

Joshua Elston

Joshua Elston did not walk into his undergraduate research experience with a grand plan. He was a rising senior in aerospace engineering at the �Ǹ�Թ�, curious about the field but not yet sure where he fit within it. One summer changed everything!

In 2023, Elston joined CU �Ǹ�Թ�'s Summer Program for Undergraduate Research (SPUR), landing a position in the bioastronautics division of the Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences. It was his first real exposure to the field of human spaceflight, a subject that had never appeared in any of his coursework.

"It really opened my eyes to some other potential avenues for work within aerospace," Elston said. "At that point I wasn't really drawn to any of the specific areas that had been covered in my undergraduate classes. This offered an avenue that really piqued my interest."

What followed reads less like a career plan and more like a series of the right conversations at the right moments, each one building on the last.

Through his SPUR experience, Elston had the opportunity to present his research at a conference, where he crossed paths with Dani Selva, a faculty member from Texas A&M's Department of Aerospace Engineering. Their conversation, sparked by overlapping research interests, eventually led Elston to reach out about graduate school. In August 2024, he began a master's program at Texas A&M's Systems Autonomy and Knowledge Lab, where his research focuses on human-autonomous agent collaboration and how to support astronauts as communication delays with Earth grow longer during deep space missions.

From there, a connection at NASA Ames Research Center in California landed him a NASA OSTEM internship at Johnson Space Center in Houston in fall 2025. There, he worked in the Human Health and Performance Directorate, supporting spacesuit fit and comfort evaluations.

Joshua expanded on his internship experience: "This summer, I interned with the Advanced Suit Team at NASA Johnson Space Center, supporting the development and execution of suited test series within vacuum chamber and gravity-offload test facilities. Over the course of my internship, I contributed firsthand to all phases of human-in-the-loop spacesuit testing, including test planning and documentation, crew training (including for members of the astronaut corps), test execution, and post-test analysis. These test series also provided opportunities to collaborate with a number of teams across JSC as well as several of NASA's commercial partners, giving me a more holistic understanding of the collective effort required to execute testing that will help enable future Artemis missions."

Joshua returned to NASA Johnson Space Center for another OSTEM internship over summer 2026. This time his position was within the spacesuits branch of the Engineering Directorate (officially as a space suit, portable life support and crew survival intern)! The group he joined for summer 2026 really liked his experience in the Human Health & Performance Directorate last fall. It was a great opportunity to build on that internship and gain experience with another organization within NASA JSC. Three years ago, he never would have imagined he would have the chance to work on a spacesuit at NASA.

"I wouldn't have known about the program at A&M without research," Elston said. "I wouldn't have reached out to the people I did at NASA. Everything has stemmed from that same starting point."

When he asked his section manager at JSC what made his application stand out, her answer was simple: he came recommended. The email chain that had begun with his CU advisor had quietly traveled all the way to Houston.

Belonging in the Lab

Elston is candid about the fact that stepping into a research environment as an undergraduate was not without its challenges. Surrounded by master's and PhD students who had spent years in their fields, he struggled at first with a sense of not quite belonging.

"Coming in as a rising senior, it was daunting to feel that I was making a contribution within their world," he said. "But it was really a credit to my mentors; they introduced me into that setting and gave me an opportunity to feel like the work I was doing was significant."

That lesson has stayed with him. In each new position since — graduate school, a summer internship, a fall internship — he has felt that initial wave of unfamiliarity. Each time, he says, it has passed.

"Getting the opportunity to participate in these research positions means that people have put confidence in you and trust you to make meaningful contributions," he said. "That's something that got instilled early through undergraduate research."

Eyes on the Horizon

Elston plans to complete his master's degree at Texas A&M before pursuing a career in human spaceflight, with his sights set on NASA Johnson Space Center or a role in commercial spaceflight with a company like Blue Origin. He is already building those connections, including a recent conversation over coffee with the lead Capcom for NASA's Artemis mission.

In a twist that surprised even him, his current NASA mentor turns out to be a fellow Buff: a CU �Ǹ�Թ� alum who also worked as a bioastronautics research assistant during his undergraduate years.

"It's funny to see how everything has kind of fallen into place," Elston said. "Even though coming to Texas wasn't in my five-year plan, everything that stemmed from doing SPUR has resulted in me doing work that I'm passionate about and that excites me. I don't think I would have known that without that one summer."

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