Accomplished first-generation Montana State student to graduate Dec. 12

BOZEMAN - Montana State University graduating senior Carlos Rivas works hard and stays busy. And he has to, if he wants to reach his career goal of becoming an astronaut. According to NASA, there have been only 370 astronauts in its corps since 1959. Rivas has been working toward that goal, choosing his experiences in a calculated way, since before he enrolled at MSU.

"I want to build autonomous flight systems that can learn, adapt and operate reliably in uncertain environments," Rivas said. "I want to develop the foundations required to connect perception to intelligent flight behavior. This direction is linked to my long-term goal of becoming an astronaut. To reach that level, I need to contribute to the advancement of autonomous aerospace systems."

After graduating as valedictorian in 2022 from Washington's Gig Harbor High School, he came to MSU as a first-generation college student, majoring in computer engineering and minoring in computer science with an emphasis in machine learning. About 18% of MSU's undergraduate population and 12% of its graduate population identify as first generation, meaning their parents didn't complete a four-year degree.

"I grew up about an hour south of Seattle," Rivas said of his decision to attend MSU. "And I wanted to experience something different."

He paid for much of his tuition through the Western Undergraduate Exchange, a program that helps students from 15 Western states pay discounted out-of-state tuition rates. Through this program, tuition rates are capped at no more than 150% of the in-state tuition for students from participating states. According to MSU's website, the WUE Scholarship at MSU is a rigorous, competitive application, due to the award's high value. Recipients of the scholarship routinely have a cumulative 3.8 high school GPA or higher.

Since his arrival at MSU, Rivas has made the dean's list each semester and is on track to graduate this December - one semester early.

"My drive comes from wanting to become an astronaut," he said. "But I also just enjoy the work I do."

Rivas is also a member of Tau Beta Pi, the 140-year-old national engineering honor society, and IEEE-HKN, an electrical engineering honor society that is 124 years old. After his freshman year, he completed an internship at the Idaho National Laboratory Center for Advancing Energy Studies.

"That was how I was first exposed to research," Rivas said. "It was a great first experience. I was working on an autonomous tool-changing system for industrial robotic arms."

Rivas developed a mechanism that could be 3D printed, rather than created through an expensive machining process, and used a system of linkages, rather than pneumatics, to drive the devices. Linkages are a system of rods, levers or joints that transmit motion.

"So, this significantly reduced the cost of manufacturing," he said.

Rivas also spent a summer interning at Johns Hopkins University where he worked on computational sensing and medical robotics. He spent another summer as part of California Institute of Technology's WAVE Fellows Program, a 10-week summer undergraduate research program where he worked on improving autonomous vehicles' ability to "see" their surroundings. He was also first author on a publication during his time at Johns Hopkins, and at MSU contributed to a conference paper regarding proof-of-concept experiments using lidar to identify unknown drones. The paper outlines the methods and results of both data collection and machine learning analysis.

"From the data, we could determine the drone propeller's type, its (revolutions per minute) and how many blades it has, for instance," he said of the project he conducted in the lab of Bradley Whitaker, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at MSU.

"Carlos has demonstrated his capability to pursue both intellectual merit and broader impacts," Whitaker said. "His intellectual merit is evidenced by his coursework performance and his ability to conduct successful academic research. He has shown his eagerness to participate in extracurricular activities and is an excellent mentor for less experienced researchers."

Rivas served as the mechanical team leader in MSU's RoboCats, a group of engineering students who design and build an autonomous underwater vehicle - picture a 2.5-foot storage bin-shaped submarine - to compete in RoboNation's RoboSub international competition. RoboNation is a nonprofit organization that provides hands-on educational experiences that challenge students to find innovative solutions to global issues. The annual RoboSub competition involves a number of autonomous tasks that each submarine attempts to accomplish, including navigating through underwater rings and doing prescribed acrobatic maneuvers, such as turning 360 degrees, in a set amount of time.

"When I was part of the club, we achieved the highest placement we had ever achieved as a school," he said.

Rivas said MSU "makes it easy" to seek out valuable extracurricular activities, such as serving as an engineering tutor and a teaching assistant.

"MSU makes it easy to gain multiple benefits from doing extracurriculars," he said. "Students get paid to do research, tutoring, etc. All of the top schools I have done research at and visited do not offer those opportunities."

After graduation, Rivas plans to work in the semiconductor industry for Applied Materials in Kalispell as a liaison between software and mechanical teams.

"Without the support I've received at MSU and from my peers, none of this would have been possible," Rivas said. "I'm proud of what I've accomplished."