Preston is a fourth-year undergraduate at UC Davis, double majoring in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. In the HRVIP Lab, he contributes to the development of a wearable countermeasure to space adaptation sickness as part of the CHANGES project. While most of his time on that project is spent leading software development, he also enjoys the hands-on aspect of supporting hardware design. Outside of the lab, Preston is a mechanical co-lead on the 3D Organic Polymer Silk (3D OPS) team with the Bio-Innovation Group at UC Davis, which seeks to 3D print synthetic spider silk. He is reconstructing an existing 3D printer to print the silk into desired structures without sacrificing the unique strength and elasticity of naturally-produced spider silk. With these research projects, he gains experience in rapid prototyping, software development, human systems integration, and team leadership and organization. He has a genuine interest in space-related research and enjoys learning new skills such as Python programming, CFD, and multiple languages. Other than school and research, Preston plays volleyball and soccer and enjoys hiking, camping, and indoor rock climbing.

Paper on Spider Silk Research: https://doi.org/10.47611/jsr.v10i4.1420