Paolo Arguelles
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About

Hey there, and thanks for stopping by my website! I'm a systems engineer at Sandia National Laboratories (San Francisco Bay Area) working in nuclear deterrence R&D and supporting development of the W87-1 nuclear warhead.

I earned my master's degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Cornell University at the age of 20.

I began college when I was 14 years old, starting my academic career at California State University - Los Angeles. Soon after, I received my bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, graduating summa cum laude with a near-perfect 3.99 GPA. I was named an Edison Scholar by the Honors College in 2014 and was honored by the Barry Goldwater Scholarship Foundation in 2016. I served as president of the Early Entrance Program Club, campus chair of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and volunteered as a student staff member at the Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs. I am a proud member of the honor societies of Phi Kappa Phi and Tau Beta Pi.‍

At Cal State LA, I conducted chemistry research with Prof. Frank Gomez in his Microfluidics and Point-of-Care Diagnostics Lab where I worked on low-cost, paper-based analytical devices and assays. I was also part of a biomedical engineering effort led by Prof. Deborah Won to study how the "gamification" of realtime biosignals can help motivate spinal cord injury patients that lead largely sedentary lifestyles to exercise. For my senior capstone project, I worked with Northrop Grumman engineers and Prof. Ni Li to study articulating solar sails as a novel form of CubeSat attitude control. I have published academic papers in all three aforementioned areas. Upon graduation, I was selected by engineering faculty to deliver a speech at the university's annual honors convocation and was the class speaker for the Honors College.

I began graduate study at Cornell University becoming one of the youngest graduate students at the college. I conducted my graduate thesis work with Prof. Amit Lal and DARPA on a surface acoustic wave MEMS gyroscope for missile guidance systems. I was a researcher at the Collective Embodied Intelligence Laboratory where I conducted research in bio-inspired swarm robotics with Prof. Kirstin Petersen. I was also a researcher at Cornell's Space Systems Design Studio (SSDS) under Prof. Mason Peck, the former NASA Chief Technologist, where I developed the software and electrical subsystems for the Spacecraft Flight Simulator and Attitude Testbed.

In addition to taking a gap year during the pandemic, I started a nonprofit to help close the digital divide.