YSM Issue 90.1

UNDERGRADUATE PROFILE
DEVIN CODY (SM’17)
IT REALLY IS JUST ROCKET SCIENCE
►BY ELIZABETH RUDDY
Ten. Ten Yalies begin the countdown, holding their breath,
praying. Nine. A lone rocket sits in an endless expanse of canyonfilled
wilderness. Eight. They smile, their eyes never straying from
Chronos, awaiting the culmination of their year of work. Seven. Six.
The numbers fly, tumbling out of their mouths. Five. Four. Three.
The exhilaration builds. Two. All they can do now is watch. One.
Devin Cody, now a senior double majoring in Electrical
Engineering and Applied Physics, remembers that day in June
of 2014 clearly. The competition rocket team, a subset of the Yale
Undergraduate Aerospace Association (YUAA), launched Chronos,
a rocket which they had been developing for months, seven thousand
feet into the air, earning second place at the Intercollegiate Rocket
Engineering Competition. The objective of their launch was to test
general relativity using two atomic clocks. They hoped that the clock
in the rocket would tick slower (on the scale of ten trillionths of a
second) relative to the clock on the ground due to time dilatation,
a physics framework that dictates how time passes differently in
different reference frames. Although the data from the clocks was
ultimately inconclusive, the launch itself was successful.
For Cody, launching Chronos was a thrilling experience. “It was
exhilarating to see our rocket fly into the air at close to the speed of
sound, just praying that the parachutes would deploy,” said Cody.
Since the launch, he has become an active member of the YUAA. He
served as one of the group’s co-presidents during his junior year, and
he continues to serve as a senior advisor on their executive board
this year.
PHOTOGRAPHY BY GEORGE ISKANDER
►Devin Cody serves as a senior advisor on the Yale Undergraduate
Aerospace Association’s executive board.
During his sophomore year, Cody was selected to lead a YUAA
project to build a radio telescope. He drew on his experiences from
the previous summer at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory
in West Virginia, where he helped improve the accuracy of
telescopes by developing code to both detect and correct errors and
malfunctions. At Yale, Cody’s 16 person team designed and built an
8 foot telescope, complete with a mount, receiver, and control code.
“That was a really cool project for me because I got to work with
some incredible engineers at Yale and with people who became some
of my closest friends,” said Cody. The telescope currently sits on the
roof of the Yale Leitner Observatory and Planetarium.
Cody’s favorite research, however, was the work he did this summer
with the Avionics and Hardware Engineering group of SpaceX,
a private company currently pushing the boundaries of aerospace
technology. SpaceX aims to bring down the cost of access to space by
developing technology that will enable rocket reusability. At SpaceX,
Cody developed an Electromagnetic Compatability (EMC) testing
apparatus to test whether a coaxial cable provided adequate shielding.
While he was there, Cody tested which shielding mechanisms were
the most effective, research that was in great demand by members
in other groups within SpaceX. “It was incredible seeing the impact
that my work had almost immediately,” said Cody. “I think you
realize your work matters when you have people from the other side
of the company pushing you to get your work done fast because they
need your results to make informed decisions about their work.”
Well into his senior year at Yale, Cody is now exploring another
passion, quantum computing. Together with Professor Michel
Devoret, he is studying quantum bits (qubits) in order to determine
their properties. Qubits are similar to regular computer bits—
both are small units of data used to store information and execute
instructions. However, qubits are used in quantum computers and
are potentially capable of more efficient calculations. To investigate,
Cody and a graduate student from Devoret’s lab are designing a
computationally efficient method of optimizing qubit design.
Devin Cody will graduate from Yale this spring with a double
major in Applied Physics and Electrical Engineering and copious
work experience at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory,
SpaceX, NASA, and the Yale Quantum Institute. When asked about
his plans for after Yale, Cody laughed. “It’s a valid question, I don’t
have many answers just yet. I’m not entirely sure what I want to
do… definitely electrical engineering.” But even within electrical
engineering, Cody is certainly not tied to any one area, and it will be
fascinating to see in which direction he chooses to launch.
36 Yale Scientific Magazine December 2016 www.yalescientific.org