I'm Jaden, a B.S. graduate in Applied Physics (Creighton University) and Mechanical Engineering (WashU) and soon-to-be M.S. Aerospace Engineering graduate from WashU.
Chief Engineer, Testing Coordinator, Lead Driver, and Driver Coach of WashU Racing; former Aerodynamics and Composites Lead.
The WUFR-26: 25th of 131 teams, the highest-performing car in WashU Racing history, and a perfect 100/100 design score.
About
I grew up in Crocker's Collision Center, my family's autobody shop in Watertown, South Dakota. After school, on weekends, through every summer: that shop was where I spent my time, working alongside my grandfather, my dad, and my two brothers.
By the time I was sixteen, I had honed my skills and learned enough about how vehicles work, and how they go together, to take on my own projects. I bought a totaled car and rebuilt it with the help and guidance of my family. The process was a complete start-to-finish rebuild: diagnosing the damage, removing the damaged parts, repairing the structure and salvageable components, sourcing new parts, installing replacement components, repairing the bodywork, replacing the interior, and refinishing the vehicle. Not as an assignment, but because it was the natural next step in a place where understanding how things work was how they were done correctly.
What the shop gave me wasn't just skill with tools; it was an instinct for thinking about how systems interact on a vehicle: how a chassis decision affects suspension geometry, how a structural repair changes the way loads distribute through the car, how every decision affects nearly every other downstream decision. That systems-level intuition has shaped everything I've done since.
When I left for university, I wanted the theory to match the intuition. That led me to physics at Creighton University, then to engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, and eventually to aerodynamics with WashU Racing. Aerodynamics is the invisible system that touches everything on a car in motion. It's a physics problem, a design problem, and a vehicle-level integration problem all at once, combined with a million other small details. The shop prepared me for exactly that kind of thinking.
Today I am the Chief Engineer of WashU Racing, coordinating 60+ engineers across six technical systems toward a common goal on the WUFR-27 race car: build our most competitive car while making smarter decisions than ever before. The work looks different than it did in the shop. The instinct behind it hasn't changed.
Crocker's Collision Center, Watertown, SD, where I gained the intuition I've carried with me ever since.
Education
My education started with physics, the desire to understand the fundamental rules of nature, and the mathematical language to describe them. I then layered mechanical and aerospace engineering on top of that foundation. Each degree answered a question the previous one raised.
Physics was the starting point because I wanted to understand why things behave the way they do, not just how to work with them. Applied physics gave me the mathematical language for forces, fluid behavior, material mechanics: the overall design process. The minor in mathematics reinforced the toolset. This degree taught everything that engineering assumed.
My Creighton University senior capstone was an aerodynamic investigation of a go-kart body using CFD and a wind tunnel I built myself. This is where my physics and engineering instinct first converged formally. That project lives in the Projects section.
The physics foundation came first, then engineering degrees taught me to apply it. Beyond the classroom concepts, my education and experience taught me to design systems, validate simulations against real-world measurements, and make decisions under constraints. The M.S. in Aerospace Engineering oriented everything toward aerodynamics, vehicle performance, and structures. This is where my physics background, my work on the racing team, and my passion collide most directly.
The CFD work in ANSYS Fluent draws on the same Navier-Stokes formulations from physics. The composite manufacturing and structural analysis work on the aero package draws directly from the Mechanical Behavior of Composites course.
The M.S. aerospace coursework feeds directly into the 5-dimensional aerodynamic map currently in development for WUFR-27, where I am mapping CL, CD, and CoP across front ride height, rear ride height, yaw angle, roll angle, and steer angle.
One of a few students selected for Boeing's elite mentorship program based on academic performance and demonstrated technical leadership within the WashU Racing Aerodynamics sub-team.
Racing — WashU Racing, FSAE
WashU Racing competes in Formula SAE, an international collegiate engineering competition where student teams design, build, test, and race a formula-style car from scratch each year. I joined as a general Aerodynamics & Composites member in September 2024, was promoted to Aerodynamics & Composites Lead in May 2025, and to Chief Engineer & Driver Coach in May 2026.
WUFR-26 on track for the acceleration event
As Chief Engineer, my job is to make sure every design and build decision across the six technical sub-teams (aerodynamics, suspension, chassis, electronics & data acquisition, ergonomics, and powertrain) serves the same goal: a faster, more consistent car at competition.
I started with the data. Analyzing WUFR-26 competition results identified suspension and powertrain inconsistencies as the primary drivers of our performance gaps. The vehicle was observed to suffer from lateral favorability, obtaining higher lateral G forces in left-hand turns. Powertrain experienced a fuel rail pressure loss over time, among other issues, and further testing revealed this pressure loss stemmed from the fuel pump overheating. From that diagnosis, I set the season's vehicle-level performance targets, informed each system of the major issues affecting their subteams, built the testing plans, and structured the build program around closing those gaps. Both issues are now being resolved in the WUFR-27 build. I coordinate 60+ engineers and own the testing schedule and build season from first shakedown through competition weekend.
5‑D aerodynamic map: predicting aerodynamic behavior across five different operating parameters
At competition, I set the race strategy for each dynamic event and communicate it on two levels: to the team's engineers, so everyone knows the plan and their part in it, and to the driver, so they know exactly how to approach the event.
A car is only as fast as its driver can confidently drive it, and a team engineers better when it understands what the driver feels. I lead the selection of new test drivers, train new competition drivers and build their confidence, and personally complete the highest-risk data collection drives in our testing program.
I also teach vehicle dynamics to new drivers and to any team member who wants to learn, from both sides: the engineering that explains what the car is doing, and the driver intuition that tells you it's happening. Engineers who understand the driver's side design better cars, and drivers who understand the engineering give better feedback.
Goal-setting starts with competition data: lap times broken down by event segment, dynamic event scores, and on-car data from previous seasons. I used this to identify which systems are underperforming relative to their theoretical potential. In WUFR-26's case, suspension and powertrain inconsistency were the largest offenders.
Testing plans are structured around falsifiable targets: each system has a defined performance envelope to hit before integration, and the full-car testing sequence is designed to isolate variables before competition loads make the data harder to interpret cleanly.
I led the design, simulation, validation, and manufacturing of the full aerodynamic package for WUFR-26. The work starts before any geometry is drawn: lap-time simulation sets the vehicle-level aerodynamic coefficient performance targets, and every downstream design decision is evaluated against those numbers.
The aerodynamic package was validated against wind-tunnel and on-track data to within 10% across lift coefficient, drag coefficient, and center of pressure, meaning the simulations used to make design decisions confidently reflect real vehicle behavior.
The aerodynamic package was manufactured in-house by the aerodynamics team, with myself overseeing the mold manufacturing, mold preparation, and composite layup & curing process. I also oversaw the redesign of the front wing, rear wing, and sidepod mounting system, reducing mass by 7% below target and improving serviceability and full-team access to critical areas on the car.
Velocity contours of the front wing and axle on the WUFR-26. Simulated in ANSYS Fluent.
Undertray mold preparation for carbon fiber wet layup.
At competition, I made the trackside calls on aero configuration, gave input on the desired suspension setup between runs, and went through the rulebook with the technical inspection judges to confirm the car met every rule before it could run.
Defending the design. FSAE design judges are industry engineers, and the event is closer to an interview than a presentation: they probe every assumption, from why a target was chosen to how you know the simulation reflects the real car. I walked the judges through the full chain, from lap-time simulation targets to CFD, correlation against wind-tunnel and track data, and manufacturing, defending each decision with data. The aerodynamics system scored 13/15, the highest in team history, and WUFR-26 earned a perfect 100/100 design score. Only teams scoring 100 are considered for design finals; we missed the finals by one or two places and finished 25th of 131 teams overall after completing every dynamic event.
Aero targets are set using OptimumG lap-time simulation, translating aerodynamic parameter changes into lap time delta. This gives every design decision a quantifiable vehicle-level justification. WUFR-26 targets: CL = -3.2, CD = 1.3, CoP = 40–45% front.
Full-car external aerodynamics are simulated in ANSYS Fluent:
Validation is performed against wind-tunnel measurements and on-track instrumented testing, with a target of sub-10% delta across CL, CD, and CoP in straight-line and 20° yaw conditions.
Joined WashU Racing as a general member of the Aerodynamics sub-team in my first semester at Washington University in St. Louis. Led the redesign of the front wing truss for the WUFR-25 car and heavily contributed to the carbon fiber manufacturing process. Contributed to the early design and simulation work on WUFR-25 before being promoted to lead the sub-team in May 2025.
Two active development programs, both targeting completion for the WUFR-27.
The first aero map in WashU Racing history. We're building a complete picture of how the aerodynamic package behaves across every condition the car will see at competition, mapping five parameters: front ride height, rear ride height, yaw, roll, and steer. This gives the team a data-driven baseline for setup decisions rather than relying on intuition, and it further informs the suspension and powertrain systems about how aerodynamic performance affects their designs across the vehicle's operating envelope.
A real-time fuel consumption model integrated into the car's live telemetry display. During endurance events, fuel management is critical. Running out ends the race, not using enough sacrifices lap times. This tool will give the driver and race engineers a live fuel readout so strategy is based on data, not guesswork. In final form, this calculator will not only be used for real-time race strategy, but also to predict the fuel consumption of new vehicle setups and designs before they ever hit the track.
Professional Experience
Two professional experiences that bookend my engineering journey: the family collision shop where I learned how vehicles actually work, and the CFD internship where I brought everything I'd learned into a professional engineering environment.
Bergstrom manufactures HVAC and climate control systems for specialty vehicles. The challenge I was tasked with: every new design required CFD optimization that was iterated entirely by hand. Each iteration took one to two weeks, driving long lead times and high costs across every product development cycle.
I pioneered an automated optimization workflow using ANSYS OptiSLang with Discovery and Fluent that cut each cycle to three to four hours, letting engineers evaluate hundreds of geometric variants in the time it previously took to run one. I applied it to two real products, both of which proceeded with my new, optimized designs: an HVAC unit for a luxury automotive OEM and an air distribution duct for an agricultural equipment manufacturer. I then wrote a full user manual so the workflow would outlast my internship, advancing the capabilities of every design engineer within the company.
Presenting my automated CFD optimization workflow to company leadership (Aug 2026).
The pipeline uses ANSYS Discovery for parametric geometry generation and rapid CFD solutions, feeding into OptiSLang for design-of-experiments and response surface optimization. The key was structuring the parametric model so geometric variations could be explored without manual input at each step.
My family's collision repair shop, and the place I spent most of my childhood. From 2013 to 2021 I worked there after school and full-time every summer. From 2021 to 2023, through my first two years of university, I came back every summer.
The technical range was wide: structural failure diagnosis and repair of collision-damaged vehicles, chassis repair, MIG welding, metal component fabrication, body panel repair, and full refinishing & paint correction. What I took from it was less about any single skill and more about how to read a vehicle as a single unit, made up of hundreds of harmoniously meshed systems.
Crocker's Collision Center, Watertown, SD
Projects
Independent and academic projects that sit outside the racing team and professional experience but share the same approach: define a problem clearly, build or simulate something to test it, and close the loop with real data.
Before I had formal CFD training, I wanted to understand how body shape drives aerodynamic behavior on a vehicle. For my senior capstone, I 3D-scanned a go-kart, imported the geometry into Autodesk Fusion 360, and made iterative modifications to the body shape to investigate their aerodynamic effects, particularly focusing on drag. Each variant was simulated in Autodesk CFD to predict the aerodynamic forces it would generate and studied to link the general connection between a vehicle's geometric shape and its aerodynamic performance.
To validate the simulations, I built a makeshift wind tunnel from scratch, because if I was going to claim the CFD was accurate, I needed physical data to compare it to. While the wind tunnel was a low-fidelity setup, it was sufficient to measure the drag produced by each body shape variant and compare it to the CFD predictions. I was unable to observe flow behavior due to the materials and resources available, but the drag measurements were able to at least confirm the forces predicted by CFD to within about 20%. This led to me more confidently drawing conclusions about the aerodynamic effects of each general body shape modification and the underlying physics driving those effects.
The project wasn't assigned with this scope; the wind tunnel was my own addition. It was the first time I formally connected physics intuition, computational simulation, and physical measurement, and it's what pointed me toward aerodynamics as a discipline worth pursuing seriously.
3D scan of physical go-kart → geometry cleanup and parametric modification in Fusion 360 → steady-state CFD in Autodesk CFD across a range of body shape variants → physical wind tunnel testing of representative configurations for validation.
A mechanical design project that was commissioned by a local startup in St. Louis. They desired a completely automatic arm that would deliver a charging connector from a stationary base to a charging port located in the hood of a vehicle. Not only would this arm need to solve the deployment challenge, but it also needed to extend up to 5 ft, retract back into a 6 inch package, deliver 5 pounds of axial load, and withstand the loads and environmental conditions present in an EV charging system. Our solution consisted of a scissor-arm extension mechanism driven by a single lead screw, combined with a passive alignment system on the end effector and 3D-printed components to reduce weight and costs. The final design was a compact, lightweight, and robust arm that satisfied all requirements and desires.
The mechanism is driven by a single lead screw driven by a stepper motor, with a five-stage scissor-arm geometry achieving a 10:1 extension-to-retraction ratio. Arm geometry was optimized using custom kinematic models in MATLAB, and motor and drivetrain specification was selected through static and frictional torque loss analysis.
Finalized scissor arm and motor CAD assembly
Final assembled prototype, testing axial load with 5 lb payload
Arm length, arm count, and deployment angle were optimized using custom kinematic MATLAB models, balancing the structural limits of 3D-printed arm geometry against the target extension ratio and packaging envelope.
Response surface comparing the arm length and width with total stowed size as the optimization objective
Simple plot displaying arm length to total extension relationship
Contact
I'm actively seeking graduate engineering roles in motorsport, aerospace, and automotive engineering, with a particular interest in vehicle performance, aerodynamics, and systems engineering. Based in St. Louis, MO. Available to relocate internationally.
Résumé
Comprehensive résumé covering my most notable achievements and experiences.