Latest / Black Box Theory Podcast / From Howard to Stanford: One Engineer's Blueprint | Jayson Johnson
Transcript
- Malcolm: Our first guest is another HBCU grad as well. so yeah, like Thomas mentioned, our guest today is Jason Johnson, who just graduated from Howard University with a BS in mechanical engineering. same as us, so it's good. We got three HBCU students and three MEs now, but also minors in computer science and math. And this fall, he's heading to Stanford to start his PhD in aeronautics and astronautics as a Knight Hennessy Scholar, which is Stanford's flagship multidisciplinary graduate fellowship. And Jason is the first Howard alum ever admitted into the program out of a cohort of 87 scholars from 31 countries. he's had a ton of research experience sitting at the intersection of aerodynamics, heat transfer, scientific machine learning. And this has taken him through some serious labs, including MIT's hypersonics research lab, Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab. Howard's After Lab and an internship at Muan Space, a satellite company where he worked on both simulation and actual flight hardware qualification. Outside of the lab, he also co-founded Rooted, which is a campus platform now connecting more than 1,500 Howard students with $120,000 raised and an official university partnership in the work, in the works. Won first place and $20,000 at Howard's Empower Pitch Competition. He's also a CAR STEM scholar, a Patty Gray STEM fellow, an ASME Research Award recipient, and a brother of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity Incorporated. beta chapter. and we wanted Jason as our first guest because his story runs directly through the question that this show and this platform is built on. how do you get inside rooms and institutions that were not designed with a clear on ramp for you or for people that look like us. And once you're in, how do you use that position to build the next or the build the on ramp for the next person that that comes after you. So yeah like I said, welcome everybody. Jason Johnson, our first guest on the episode. yeah we got a we got a ton of stuff we want to He launched that fences today, man. Thomas: Man, load it loaded intro, bro. Jason, tell us how you feeling. Jayson: Yeah, I'm feeling great. I just wanna say I'm really excited to be here in the Black Blocks Theory Podcast. I'm really excited to just dive into like a lot of amazing topics and just talk about something that's also like near and dear to us. it's really cool that we're all r a f room full of like mechanical engineers, you know, HBCU. I feel like there's a lot of great topics we can talk about. And yeah, I'm Malcolm: Nah, no doubt. Jayson: really excited. Malcolm: No doubt, bro. Yeah, nah, for sure. And it's like I said, it's always great to ask somebody else, like I said, it looks like us, like I said, with a with a crazy background and resume, like Jason does. So yeah, it's a ton of stuff for us to dive into today. But like I said, we're gonna start things off, obviously starting with the origin. and everybody has their reasons for getting into it, but we wanna go back to before Howard. So what actually put mechanical engineering on your radar? And was it engineering specifically? or did you like kinda like feel like you had to get forced into it 'cause you just wanted to, you know, j jump into engineering. Like what was your what was your what kind of what kind of put it on your radar and got you into it? Jayson: There was always a push for me when I was younger just to like be innovative and creative, especially like for my parents and things like that. but for me, I generally was so curious in a lot of things. I really didn't know what I wanted to do. I feel like you typically have those stories where you know everyone is like taking stuff apart and putting it back together. Yeah, that was me too. But something for me is I was just really indecisive. So I just chose a major that I was like, okay, like I could really do anything with STEM. And it was already being pushed really heavy, of course. And so wanting to do STEM and things like that, I was like, What's the most broad thing I can do? And that ended Malcolm: Yeah. Jayson: up being mechanical engineering. Like there's really nothing you can't do. We do everything. I'm sure y'all hear that a lot all the time too. Malcolm: Facts. Nah, for sure. Jayson: and so yeah, I just decided to like take my chances, see what I like. liked and didn't like. and through like doing mechanical engineering or just like doing a lot of math and science, I was able to really narrow it down to like okay I like building stuff Malcolm: Mm-hmm. Jayson: and I actually kinda wanna get into like aerospace a bit more too. when I was in high school I had the opportunity to work at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab and that was really great for me because I had a mentor who actually had the same name as me and he was from Maryland and he would just expose me to so many cool things like aerospace, he transferred hypersonics and to me at the time like Anything that moved really fast was really interesting to me. So I kinda just built upon that and that's just what got me more interested in want to major in it in college and then I was able to do research in the same field and it just kept growing since then and I was like, Okay, well I'm good at this, I might as well keep doing it. So it was a little bit of both, like Malcolm: Yeah. Jayson: I was put into it, but I just wanted to ke keep continue doing it and we'll see where it goes now. Malcolm: Nah, no, that's fire. That's I were you I I meant to act 'cause I I just realized I we I feel like we have a we have a crossover there because I interned at at APL when I was in high school too. Were you in the were you in the the circuit aspire pro? Yeah. Bro that's that's crazy. Jayson: No way. Aspire. Yes. Yo, that's crazy. Wow. Malcolm: I did that in high school, like my senior year, but I was on like Jayson: Mm-hmm. Malcolm: a I was working in like on like a almost like an entire like I was doing like all research all on like software engineering, like in cybersecurity, internet of things, IoT and AI. So it's like, nah, that's that's actually insane. That's a small world, bro. Jayson: No,