Joseph "Cullen" O'Connor, PE's Linkedin Analytics

My passions are engineering, creativity, and leadership. I believe that engineering is going through a fundamental shift due to simulation, additive manufacturing, and machine learning. This gives us a huge opportunity to proactively shape the direction of the field that only occurs when huge disruption is introduced. I intend to add my voice in order to nudge the field back to embracing deliberate creativity. I am lucky enough to be working where I dreamed about working as a kid - at NASA. Currently, I am working as a Simulation Engineer at Goddard Space Flight Center as a contractor through Actalent on the Mars Sample Return - Capture, Containment, and Return System. Yeah, we're bringing the Mars rocks back! I have a broad range of simulation experience including Ansys, ADAMS, Matlab, Simulink/Simscape software and from individual parts to system performance analysis. My experience includes structural FEA from quasi static to explicit, MBD mechanism studies, optimization studies, Monte Carlo simulation, and occasionally thermal analysis. I have also worked as a Systems Engineer in Requirements development, V&V, and getting customer acceptance. My next steps are building my management skills in order to move into a traditional leadership role. This will allow me to bring in creative practices and work to establish metrics on the effect of a creative culture in an engineering space.