Born and raised in New York City, James is a Junior Mechanical Engineering major at the University of Notre Dame. He has had a love for engineering before he knew what it was. Driven by a love for understanding how the world around him works, James is a lifelong learner who has a passion for creativity. This has taken many forms, from his love of music to his participation on the Notre Dame Rocketry Team (NDRT), and even his time spent on personal projects learning how to use various fabrication and prototyping technologies. Thanks to a wide variety of experiences, James is an effective engineer on the rise and problem solver, capable of working with or leading multidisciplinary teams on both technical and non-technical tasks and projects.
Rocketry Team
James is a proud officer of the Notre Dame Rocketry Team, and has gained hands-on experience using skills both technical and non-technical. He has especially enjoyed the opportunity to engage with all technical squads of the team as Safety Officer, and to lead his own multidisciplinary squad within the team. The team competes annually in NASA’s University Student Launch Initiative (USLI), and his participation on the team fuels his passion for aerospace and creative design. This national competition challenges students to design, build, launch, and recover rockets with full integration of technically challenging engineering payloads. The design and operation portions are fully documented within the framework of a NASA design life cycle, with intensive technical reports and presentations due at project milestones, which are reviewed by a board of NASA engineers and scientists. As part of the competition submitted work includes a project proposal, preliminary design review (PDR) report and presentation, critical design review (CDR) report and presentation, flight readiness review (FRR) report and presentation, launch readiness review (LRR) inspection, and post launch assessment review (PLAR) report. Months of intense design, writing, validation, construction, and testing culminate in a flight at the competition in Huntsville, AL.
Musicianship
James is also an active member of the University of Notre Dame Band of the Fighting Irish Marching Band, as well as 4 other musical ensembles within the Notre Dame Bands organization. Music is a passion that James has had his whole life, and his time participation in band has taught him valuable lessons on teamwork, humility, responsibility, and creativity. For the 2019-2020 academic year, James has been elected to be the Band Vice President. In this role, James acts as a leader to band, assists with Band communication, and organizes the design, ordering, and delivery of all band merchandise for the marching band (which totals close to 400 in membership). This entails ensuring proper cashflow to order all items, working with vendors as the professional contact for the band, providing customer support to band members who have problems with their orders, ensuring all products are properly licensed, and managing order lead times to ensure delivery. This is an incredibly exciting role that James looks forward to performing.
Featured on this website are summaries of projects that James believes showcase his abilities as an engineer. Please contact jcole8@nd.edu for inquiries.