VSCL Undergraduate Research Assistant Alex Gross is one of two AERO student recipients of the new College of Engineering Horizons: 21 Fellowships for 21st Century Scholars (EHDF). The EHDF provides 21 research fellowships for domestic students beginning their PhD program at Texas A&M University. This fellowship includes a $30,000 fellowship stipend provided by the College of Engineering (COE) during the first year of doctoral studies, full tuition and required student fees for full-time enrollment, a professional development scholarship of $1,500 for first year, mentorship, and funding provided by the Department of Aerospace Engineering via a Graduate Assistantship (Teaching or Research) during subsequent years.
Gross is an Engineering Honors undergraduate student pursuing his B.S. degree in aerospace engineering with minors in mathematics and computer science. He is currently a Year-Round Undergraduate Research and Development Intern at Sandia National Laboratories, working on the Autonomy for Hypersonics program. Gross is a recipient of the prestigious AIAA Cary Spitzer Digital Avionics Scholarship, the Herman F. Heep Scholarship, the Benjamin R and Deaana J Smith Scholarship, and the Dean’s Honor Roll. Gross is currently President of the TAMU AIAA Student Branch, and Secretary of the TAMU Students for the Exploration and Development of Space. He is a 2020 award-Winning Proposal recipient of the L’SPACE NASA Proposal Writing and Evaluation Experience Academy.
Gross has been a member of VSCL since 2020 and is currently working on the research project Enhancing the Cycle-of-Learning for Autonomous Systems to Facilitate Human-Agent Teaming , and he has contributed to the Autonomous Intelligent Detection Tracking and Recognition (AIDTR) and Agile Technology Development (ATD) – Air-Ground Coordinated Teaming projects. He also Investigated and developed reinforcement learning algorithms for training of Mars rover vehicles for NASA JPL. His research interests are on UAS autonomous guidance and landing, embedded systems, and user-interface integration. His goal is to work in the aerospace industry as a vehicle guidance, navigation and control engineer for spaceflight vehicles.