Ella Joliet is a sophomore Aerospace Engineering student from Indianapolis, Indiana. She is interested in exploratory space vehicle design and development and is currently in pursuit of her Private Pilot’s License. After participating in staff meetings for VSCL in Spring of 2023, she is excited to be more involved in VSCL projects in the Fall of 2023. Joliet intends to graduate in 2026 with a Bachelor’s of Science and a Spanish Minor.
Samantha Jones
Samantha Jones is a junior from Brownsville, TX. In pursuit of her aspirations to have a career in the aerospace industry and work for the Department of Defense, Samantha maintains several leadership roles on campus. Aside from VSCL, she is a part of the AggieSat Laboratory. Within AggieSat Laboratory, Samantha acts as Outreach Co-Manager, Shadow Corp Lead, and was a member of one of the
rover building teams. She was also the 23-24 Outreach Co-Chair for SWE. Lastly, she works for the K-12 Outreach Program known as Spark! Samantha is extremely passionate about aeronautics and space exploration and is ecstatic to use the knowledge she acquires at VSCL to propel her career and set herself apart.
Katelyn Lancaster
Katelyn Lancaster is a Senior pursuing a Bachelor’s of Science in Aerospace Engineering and a Mathematics minor. She has been an active member of VSCL since Fall 2020 working in flight test operations, system identification, and the Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGV) project. Katelyn will be continuing her system identification work with a fall project integrating SIDPAC analysis for our current vehicles. Katelyn has interned the previous 3 summers at Lockheed Martin working in Configuration Management and Flight Test Engineering.
Reza Langari
JR Thompson Endowed Chair and Department Head, Engineering Technology and Industrial Distribution
Professor, Mechanical Engineering
Affiliated Faculty, Aerospace Engineering
Affiliated Faculty, Electrical and Computer Engineering
Noah Luna
2nd Lieutenant Noah Luna, USAF, is a Master’s student in the aerospace engineering department. He graduated from the United States Air Force Academy with a B.S. degree in Aeronautical Engineering and Computer Science. During his undergraduate studies, he performed research on a neural network based flight control system for an ongoing fixed-wing project through the Air Force Research Lab (AFRL). Additionally, he completed an internship and further research with Lockheed Martin Skunk Works as a Software and Flight Test engineer developing nonlinear adaptive flight controls for aerial systems. He has been selected to go to pilot training after earning his Master’s degree from Texas A&M. At VSCL, Noah will be working on Adaptive Control for Multiple Time Scale Systems.
Evelyn Madewell
Evelyn Madewell graduated from the University of Washington in May 2024 with a BS in Aeronautical & Astronautical Engineering and a Minor in Applied Mathematics. As an undergraduate, she was a research assistant and test pilot in the Autonomous Flight Systems Lab. Her research background includes wilderness search and rescue, hazard aware landing optimization, and beyond visual line of sight operations, which she presented at the 2024 AIAA SciTech Forum. Evelyn has interned with Freefly Systems as a flight test engineer, where she programmed a novel testing procedure for the Astro commercial drone platform, and is currently investigating Sequential Triangulation as a way of solving 3D visual navigation in GPS-denied scenarios with Hood Technology. With her interest in flight test engineering and UAV controls, Evelyn’s work with VSCL will begin by contributing to the Real-time System Identification of UAS project.
Scott McHarg
Pilot
Private Pilot ASEL
Civilian Contractor/Instructor for the U.S. Army, Navy, and Marines flying the RQ-2 Pioneer UAV ’93-‘96
3,300 logged hours as an External Pilot
2011 US National Vice Champion in Precision Aerobatics
Futaba Factory Team Pilot
Castle Factory Team Pilot
Texas A&M UAS Supervising Authority Committee Member
Texas A&M RELLIS Operations Committee Member
Advisor for TAMU SAE Aero Design Team, TAMU AIAA Design Build Fly (DBF), and Society of Sonic Flight Engineers (SFSS)
Texas A&M AERO402 Senior CAPSTONE Design Instructor
Cassie-Kay McQuinn
Cassie-Kay McQuinn graduated with her Bachelor of Science degree in Aerospace Engineering with Summa Cum Laude and Engineering Honors, and a M.S. in Aerospace Engineering both from Texas A&M University. Her Masters thesis, titled “Online Near-Real Time Open-Loop System Identification from Closed-Loop Flight Test Data“, investigated identifying linear dynamic models onboard a vehicle in near-real time with and without an active controller. This work was performed for a small Unmanned Air System (UAS) utilizing low cost, commercial-off-the-shelf components.
Cassie-Kay is pursuing a Ph.D. and has been an active member of VSCL since Fall 2021 In addition to completing Engineering Honors, she is a Presidential Endowed Scholar, the 2021 Aerospace Engineering Advisory Board Scholarship recipient, and has earned a certificate of Holistic Leadership in Engineering through completion of the Zachry Leadership Program. She is the former President of the Texas A&M chapter of the Sigma Gamma Tau Aerospace Engineering Honor Society. While being a grad student she has interned with Sandia National Labs and most recently with the Air Force Research Lab researching safe autonomy for aerospace systems. As an undergraduate she interned with L3Harris Technologies working in the Structural Analysis and Structural Design departments.
Cassie-Kay’s current work investigates applying run time assurance algorithms for safety critical systems. Her interests are in the implementation of trusted autonomy, flight testing, and aircraft dynamics.
Lily Mikulas
Lily Mikulas is a Junior currently pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Aerospace Engineering with a minor in Mathematics, Expected to graduate in May 2026. She became passionate about Dynamics and aviation during her time as an undergraduate student and began attending staff meetings in the Fall of 2024. She then became an active member of VSCL in the Spring of 2025. She is currently working on the System Identification Project. Her primary motivation stems from her genuine enthusiasm for aviation safety.
Luis Munoz
Luis Munoz is a senior pursuing a Bachelor’s of Science in Aerospace Engineering. He has been an active member of VSCL since summer 2023. He has worked on flight testing of the labs primary flight platform in the Texas A&M University Oran W. Nicks Low-Speed Wind Tunnel. He has experience working as a research assistant at University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) aerospace center designing a CubeSat model. His interests are in flight controls and dynamics.