Royce Pokela
Mentor Description
My name is Royce Pokela. I am a third-year PhD student at the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering. I began my research experience as an undergraduate research assistant at the High-Performance Materials Institute (HPMI) working in additive manufacturing. There, I completed my undergraduate senior design with the NASA sponsored development of 3D printing fiber optics. I am currently completing my research at the Florida Center of Advanced Aero-Propulsion (FCAAP). I use advanced experimental techniques to characterize various flow phenomena that occur on axisymmetric slender bodies and compare results with high-fidelity simulations. In the short term, I hope to continue to expand my knowledge of computational fluid simulations to coincide with my extended experimental experience. In the long term, I hope to utilize my PhD to work in high level research with NASA at one of their aeronautics research sites. My interest mainly lies with rocket aerodynamics and launch vehicle characterization and research.