Hello world, my name is Jake Yamashita Sperry.
I am a rising junior studying Mechanical Engineering with minors in Engineering Design and Environmental Studies from Jones College. I am the current President of Rice Eclipse, the student rocketry team, as well as the current President of Cloud 9, Rice’s club Ultimate Frisbee team. My passions/hobbies include traveling, hiking, National Parks, scuba diving and underwater photography, skiing, reading books, manhwa, and manga, and a bunch of other random things.
One thing I’m really proud of that I’ve built is UGLA, Rice Eclipse’s scientific payload that will be a part of Minerva, our competition rocket being launched in June of 2022. It consisted of a lot of CAD design, experiment design, manufacturing, machining, and documentation.
UGLA
A few things I want to make in the future is a set of ziplines that can take me wherever I need to go on campus, a plasma sword (basically a lightsaber) with magnets (so I can bring it to my hand with ‘the force’), a pen that can turn into a sword or any other item that isn’t a pen, and a solar powered (or equally energy efficient) plane/rocket/air vehicle that can still be efficient enough for use in many areas.
One thing I want to get out of iSEED this summer is exploring the engineering design process in a new environment as well as being immersed in a new and interesting culture.