Ben Puckett

Ben Puckett is an aerospace engineering student at the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH). He is currently part of the Space Hardware Club at UAH where student teams design and build small-scale spaceflight vehicles. His goal is to one day work for companies in the aerospace industry like NASA and SpaceX and plans to specialize in spacecraft design to build the next generation of spaceflight vehicles. He has participated in many student competitions within the For the Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST) organization where students design and build robots on teams and learn foundational engineering skills. Ben has mentored other students through the FIRST program to spark an interest in Science Technology Engineering Arts and Mathematics (STEAM) fields. He has self-taught various programming languages like Java and Python which has helped him develop autonomous and driver-controlled robotics programs as well as reinforcement learning models that have competed in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) DeepRacer competition. He has also learned design software applications like Autodesk Fusion 360 for 3D modeling and Eagle for PCB development.