BEN KIM
Matthew Isakowitz Fellow, Class of 2024
Princeton University, Bachelor of Science in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Minors in Robotics and Intelligent Systems
Host Company: Vast Space
Ben Kim is a junior at Princeton University studying Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering with a minor in Robotics and Intelligent Systems. Since a young age, he has been inspired by countless rewatches of Apollo 13 (1995), which fuels his interest in all things regarding space travel and habitation. Previously, Ben interned at Trans Astronautica Corporation, a start-up which develops technology for sighting, capturing, and processing space debris and asteroids. He has also been an assistant at the Power Electronics Laboratory at Princeton where he helped research the behavior of self-learning piezoelectrically actuated soft robots.
He strongly believes in interdisciplinary enrichment from exploring themes that tie aerospace engineering to fields such as music theory, psychology, history, political activism, and linguistics. In addition, he greatly values never-ending yet casual, back-of-the-envelope brainstorming to envision new ideas and connect them to material learned in and outside the classroom. On campus, he has served as Music Director for the Roaring 20, the university’s premier co-ed acapella group, and the outreach director of Princeton Rocketry, in which he is a NASA RASC-AL challenge team member. He is an event supervisor for Princeton University Science Olympiad and an undergraduate advisor for first-year engineering students. In his free time, Ben enjoys interactive games, journaling, singing, movies, speedcubing, Kerbal Space Program, and piano.