Post by Princeton Engineering

#EQuadNews #StudentAthlete: Tyler Harris '27 is a team player, but when he arrived at Princeton in 2023, he found himself without a team. “I love being on a team,” said Harris. Teammates provide energy and focus. “You’re bouncing ideas off each other, you’re communicating, you’re working together.” Harris played football, basketball, and lacrosse in high school, but hadn’t been recruited by Princeton. “Sports have always been a part of my life,” he said. “I knew I wanted to play a sport in college.” He focused on lacrosse, trained during the summer, and joined the team in the fall. Not long after, he joined another team: Princeton MAE. He was drawn to the hands-on approach and collaborative style of MAE courses. One of his favorite classes was Engineering Design, where students learn to design and build products in groups. In MAE, even individual assignments, like problem sets, can be done collaboratively. “When I start to study alone, I lose motivation,” he said. Last summer, Harris worked in assistant professor Ryne Beeson’s lab on a project to identify stable low-altitude lunar orbits. The moon isn’t a perfect sphere and has uneven gravity, so finding such orbits is difficult. Harris worked with two graduate students to build models and simulate orbit paths. Lately, he’s become fascinated by aerospace, particularly innovations in commercial aviation. Companies are building electric planes, faster planes, planes that are more environmentally friendly. He’s taking courses on aerospace design and energy conversion and the environment in the spring semester, hoping to broaden his experience in aerospace engineering. It’s also an exciting semester for the men’s lacrosse team, which was ranked second in Division I. “Our goal is to win a national championship,” Harris said. “We talk about it every day. It’s awesome to walk in the locker room and have that energy. It’s contagious.”