Avinash Rao
Based at Rocket Lab in Auckland, Avinash works as a guidance, navigation and control engineer for the Electron project.
Rocket Lab is producing New Zealand's first orbital rocket launch vehicle.
Avinash was a project intern at Robinson in 2010 while in his final year of a mechatronics engineering degree at the University of Canterbury. His PhD thesis, completed in 2014, developed attitude control systems for small rockets.
“I worked in a team of four to design and build a splicing machine for high temperature superconducting strands. The material could only be manufactured reliably in short lengths, so we built a device to splice two lengths together with a very low resistance join.”
He says the Paihau—Robinson Research Institute staff worked with the students to keep them on track and get the project completed in the required time frame.
“We were encouraged to apply our skills to a problem that was unsolved at that time. They set us lofty goals for the device, which made the project challenging but ultimately very rewarding. As it turned out, we far exceeded their goals—a result that helped us win the IPENZ Ray Meyer Medal for Excellence in Student Design in 2010.”
Avinash believes his experience at Robinson has been hugely beneficial in his career, especially learning how to tackle practical problems with no textbook solution.
“It’s exactly what you come across in industry. The guidance (and sometimes criticism) of my supervisors helped me understand the need to continually move forward, even if I am faced with limited information to make a decision. This is a key lesson that I have remembered and applied ever since.”