CJ Nicklow

School: West Virginia University

Major(s): Electrical and Computer Engineering

About me: I’ve grown up in Morgantown, WV my whole life. I am interested in mathematics, physics, and most of all engineering. I originally came into college looking forward to pursuing a degree in Computer Engineering with a secondary degree in Electrical Engineering because of how interested I have always been in computers and electronic devices since I was little. I was always an avid video game player and played with all kinds of little electronic toys until I got bored with them and tore them apart. During the beginning of my Junior year at WVU though I gained an interest in pursuing Electrical Engineering more than Computer Engineering and my emphasis has really changed on which one I want to go to grad school for. What caught me was electro-magnetics and the math, science, and theory behind it. Also, every job I have looked into with computer engineering is looking for a programmer and nothing else. I like to program but I am looking forward to the hardware more than the programming in the long run. I’m planning on going to grad school for a masters in electrical engineering and also attempt for a Ph.D in the same field, and I will also hopefully finish my minor in mathematics if I don’t get a chance to take the class in the next 2 semesters. I became interested in space at a very young age and I have been since. I started working with NASA last summer at the IV&V center in Fairmont, WV. This is my first year with Goddard, and I have to say, I love it. I am working with an awesome group on a very challenging project. We are working on free space laser communications and range finding. We hope by the end of the summer to be able to send a signal to a satellite and receive it back, be able to read the message, and calculate how far away the satellite is.
Some of my other interests consist of football(which I played all the way through middle and high school), sports in general, lifting, video games, traveling, music, and weirdly enough, Mathematics. Throughout my life I have loved to play football, I was an offensive and defensive lineman on good teams. I have played countless games, ranging from Atari, to the Wii, to the XBOX 360, and computer games. I have had no time as of these past few years to play though, engineering is a great major, but it is very, very time consuming.