Â鶹ӳ»­Ó°Òô

Landon Paulino is a senior electrical engineering student at Â鶹ӳ»­Ó°Òô who wants to advance human civilization to the stars.

He first turned to engineering in high school, originally planning to study it as an undergraduate degree before pursuing law.

“I decided I like math, I like science, and I like engineering. If I go to college for it and decide I like it, I’ll decide to just do that,” Paulino said.

His senior year, he flipped the script and decided engineering was the path for him.

“I didn’t want to be a lawyer anymore. I talked to a few people, and it was not what I initially thought it was,” Paulino said. “So, I looked around and saw Lamar.”

“My parents went to Lamar, it’s close to home, I can commute, so why not go to Lamar,” Paulino expressed. “I know it has a good engineering program.”

Landon’s  love for engineering stems from the hands-on aspect of engineering, the problem solving, the hardware and software, and the implementation of ideas.

“When someone has an idea for a robot that does multiple things, they say ‘Engineering, figure it out,’ and... you figure it out,” Paulino said.

Paulino originally started his journey as a mechanical engineer, following in the footsteps of his older brother, Alex.

“I didn’t really understand electricity at all. I didn’t know the difference between voltage or currents,” Paulino said. “So, I thought it was too scary for me.”

However, Landon fell in love with electrical engineering through projects he worked on in student organizations, such as Engineers Without Borders’ Thor’s Hammer and Cherry Haunted House.

"I realized the things I was really interested in learning about, like nuclear energy, or how a nuclear power plant works, or how a robot works, or how a missile tracks things – that's all electrical.”

Though Paulino enjoys these projects, his heart lies with aerospace.He recalls seeing the first inkling of aerospace at Â鶹ӳ»­Ó°Òô, with a student who built a rocket for his senior design project, which later became the basis for the Â鶹ӳ»­Ó°Òô Association of Rocketry (LUNAR) team. Joining LUNAR and the American Institute of Aeronautics (AIAA)and Astronautics club was an important part of his journey. 

“I’ve always wanted to work at NASA,” Paulino said, “I’ve always been interested in space, so I got into AIAA.”

Paulino recently made strides towards his future career, interning at Northrop Grumman where they manufacture circuit cards for missiles.

“I’m not allowed to say which program I worked on,” Landon said, “but I did electrical board testing on one of those programs.”

 Through the Northrop Grumman internship, he was able to work on troubleshooting processes and examine why circuit boards failed, and how to make them successful.

“That was really rewarding, because I was able to shadow people, and they would ask me what I think went wrong and I was able to provide my input,” Landon stated. “It was exactly like an actual engineering job.”

Paulino shared that the class that helped him most with the internship was Electronics, where he learned about the design process for electrical circuits.

“Different classes prepare you for different industries, so they’re all valuable,” he said.

Looking into his senior year, Landon is the most excited about working on his senior design project with the LUNAR team.

“This year with LUNAR, we are doing a lot of different stuff. We will be doing active controls, which I’ve never had the chance to work on that,” Landon said. “I will be excited to figure it out.”

In the future, Paulino is excited to put all the different things he has learned in his classes into practice in the real world and work on interesting projects within aerospace.

“Hopefully I will be advancing human civilization to the stars. I’ll be putting us on the moon.”

Bringing humans to live in outer space is a difficult challenge, but one that Paulino is dedicated to working on.

“That’s why I want to work in aerospace so bad, because I view it as the future of engineering,” Landon said. “So, it’s a really noble goal, I feel, to work on that.”

The future of engineering starts here: in the hands of students here at Â鶹ӳ»­Ó°Òô, passionately working towards their goals, no matter how vast.

 

To learn more about engineering at Lamar, visit lamar.edu/engineering.
To learn more about AIAA, visit To learn more about LUNAR, visit