Project Sokoke

Project Sokoke represents the 2025-2026 High Altitude Balloon Mission for UC CubeCats. Serving as Co-Vice President, I managed the project throughout the Spring semester, focusing on achieving nominal internal temperature control and implementing hardware improvements based on our previous mission, Calico.

I was the project manager and advisor to the teams. My role included preparing weekly meetings, discussing design decisions, and organizing technical workshops. Our main goal was to ensure Sokoke is a robust mission, that can be a template for future missions, (more on that in the longer deep dive). We launched and retrieved the mission successfully on April 26th, 2026.

This leadership role deepened my understanding of club management and team mentorship. I genuinely enjoyed teaching and collaborative problem-solving. This experience also refined my definition of a Global Citizen Scholar. I now see it as the responsibility to not only advance technical frontiers, but to cultivate a community where knowledge is shared and failure is treated as a necessary precursor to engineering success. Moving forward, I intend to seek leadership roles that allow me to bridge the gap between complex research and student engagement.