Stephen
Birch
Senior aerospace engineering student with a background in music performance, building flapping wing flight hardware, CFD simulations, and mechatronic systems. Seeking a summer 2027 engineering internship and graduate school.
I started my academic journey studying cello performance at Interlochen Arts Academy. As a musician, I learned that excellence requires relentless practice, collaboration, and thoughtful compromise — every ensemble member contributes to a greater whole.
That same mindset now drives my work in aerospace engineering at Rutgers University. Switching from music to engineering meant adapting to completely different ways of thinking, but it taught me how to quickly absorb new concepts, persist through complex challenges, and apply creative thinking to technical problems.
Today I'm building a flapping wing drone under faculty advisement, running airfoil CFD simulations in ANSYS, tutoring SAT students, and serving as treasurer for a campus organization — always learning, always building.
Designing and analyzing a flapping wing drone under the advisement of Professor Mitsunori Denda. Developing CAD models of the wing and actuation mechanism in Onshape, investigating biomimetic flight principles and unsteady aerodynamics to inform wing geometry and flapping kinematics, and 3D printing wing spars, linkages, and airframe components to iterate rapidly while minimizing structural weight. The flight control unit is programmed in C to drive actuation timing and stabilize the aircraft across a range of flapping frequencies and angles of attack.
Modeled several NACA airfoils in Solidworks and imported the geometries into ANSYS for CFD analysis. Generated meshes for each airfoil at multiple angles of attack with mesh independence verification, ran laminar flow simulations to characterize airfoil aerodynamics across those angles, and captured von Kármán vortex shedding and flow separation through transient unsteady simulations.
Designed a bear canister with multiple geometries, incorporating industry-standard parts in Solidworks. Used PrePoMax to quickly generate accurate simulations under many types of loading, and optimized automatic mesh generation by creating custom meshing parameters and generation techniques.
Created a photo-detection system using photoresistors and an Arduino to determine the ambient light level. Built a custom control panel so the user can adjust the amount of food being dispensed, integrated an LCD display showing dispensed quantity and feeding instances, and designed a dispensing system using a stepper motor and gearbox to increase torque and dispensing precision.
- Mechanical Component Design
- CAD
- Dynamic System Modeling
- Mechatronic Design & Analysis
- Aircraft/Airfoil Design & Performance
- Finite Element Analysis
- Fluid Simulation
- Additive Manufacturing
- MATLAB Simulink
- Onshape
- Solidworks
- ANSYS / ANSYS Fluent
- PrePoMax
- Microsoft Visual Studio
- Microsoft 365 Suite
- MATLAB
- C
- Python
- LaTeX
Tutoring high school students in SAT Math and Reading & Writing, tailoring instruction to each student's diagnostic results and target score. Developing practice problem sets and review sessions targeting recurring weak points such as algebraic modeling, data analysis, and passage-based grammar, and teaching test-taking strategy including time management, question triage, and process of elimination. Tracking progress across practice exams and communicating performance trends and study plans to students and parents.
Managing university-distributed funds for equipment, travel, and catering. Raised and financed $3,000 for a conference at MIT and negotiated funding for a trip to Carnegie Mellon. Organizing fundraising events and performance opportunities to grow the group's presence on campus.
Pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Aerospace Engineering.
Studied cello performance, developing the discipline, collaboration, and creative problem-solving that now inform an engineering mindset.
I'm actively seeking a summer 2027 engineering internship and graduate school. Whether it's aerospace or mechanical — I'd love to hear from you.