Young alum’s work covers land, sea, space

MechSE alumnus R. Davis Born’s post-undergraduate life boasts so many incredible experiences it could give an onlooker whiplash. In the U.S. and Peru, on land and sea, on Earth and in space, Born’s work has touched many frontiers.

Born (BSME ’15) developed his first connection with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) at Caltech when he served as a summer intern in 2014. JPL is the leading U.S. center for the robotic exploration of the solar system. He then spent parts of the following three years as an intern for SpaceX—as a Vehicle Engineering Intern working on Environmental Control and Life Support Systems for Crew Dragon, and as a Launch Engineering Intern.

While at JPL, Born noticed that many of the employees at JPL have graduate degrees. “I was inspired by the passion everyone at JPL had for their work, and I realized that a graduate degree would really help my contributions to the industry be more impactful.” He earned his Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford in 2018, focusing on control theory, mechatronics, robotics, and design methodology.

In 2017, Born was a Teaching Assistant for Stanford@SEA, a 10-week biological and oceanographic course. In this program, students are taught half the time at Stanford University’s Hopkins Marine Station in Pacific Grove, and half the time at sea aboard the R/V Robert C. Seamans, which the Sea Education Association (SEA) operates on the Pacific Ocean with the support of the National Science Foundation. On board, students simultaneously studied marine biology, conducted research, and learned to sail a ship.

“This experience broadened my scientific perspectives, and really turned me on to engineering applications for ocean research. We still know so little about our oceans, and they need our help,” Born said.

Immediately after Stanford@SEA, Davis began another research excursion—this time abroad in the Peruvian Andes to explore the ruins of Chavín de Huántar, an ancient city center temple. The team of engineers on the excursion aided archaeologists who were surveying the underground galleries. Born had the chance to get creative with his study—attempting to experimentally determine the mechanical properties of the cave walls and clay of the Chavín de Huántar. One of his on-site experiments involved gathering clay and rock from the area, then testing their compressive yield strength by breaking them with buckets of water.  

Now, Born’s home is at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory where he works in the Robotic Manipulation & Sampling Group. As a Robotics Engineer, he is one of the people bringing us closer to answering questions about life on Mars.

In this role, he is heavily involved with the Mars 2020 Rover, named Perseverance. Like its predecessor Curiosity, Perseverance is nuclear powered and roughly the size of a small SUV. Curiosity has been described as a chemist; its job was to drill down Martian rock into powder to perform chemical analysis on it. Perseverance, on the other hand, collects solid rock cores, using different tools to analyze the Martian terrain. Born develops the equipment that allows Perseverance, Curiosity, and their successors to perform experiments, as well as helps build the rovers themselves.

During his first year at JPL, he worked on the Sampling & Caching Subsystem of the robotic arm on the front of the rover, the smaller robotic arm underneath, and everything they interface with. He studied the controls of the many actuators in the complex system and worked to understand how the many moving parts would interact together. Born said the challenging part of that job wasn’t the math itself. “Equations are usually easy to look up. The hard part is figuring out what numbers to use, what assumptions you can make, and whether you made the right choice. The answers aren’t in the back of the book.”

More recently, Born assumed the position of Test Conductor/System Engineer. Among the many testing campaigns for which he is responsible are the tests of the robotic arms he worked on during his first year. The aim is to observe issues in system interaction that may not have been previously considered and to prepare for possible issues that may arise on Mars. Born said the testing phase is a huge effort that requires many campaigns and many people to perform tests around the clock.