About Me
Hi, I’m Gary.
I’m an Environmental Control Systems (ECS) Analysis Engineer at Boeing and a recent Computer Science graduate from CSUMB. My route here wasn’t a straight line. It ran through a BS and MS in Mechanical Engineering, a QC role certifying pipe fittings for nuclear submarines, seven years designing and testing flight hardware at Marvin Engineering, and now Boeing, where I investigate in-service ECS problems so the cabin stays comfortable, and breathable, at 35,000 feet.
The software half came later, and by choice. I failed a programming course in high school, decided it wasn’t for me, and spent a decade as a mechanical engineer before teaching myself Python on the job and realizing I’d been wrong. I went back for a BS in Computer Science at CSUMB, nights and weekends while working full-time, and graduated in April 2026. These days I live where hardware meets software: mechanical systems running on intelligent code, heading toward autonomous drone swarms and distributed robotics.
Experience
Education
My Journey
Two mechanical degrees gave me the physical side, how machines actually move, fail, and get tested. The CS degree added the other half: the algorithms, data, and code that make them coordinate. That combination is the point. I can design the hardware, instrument the test, and write the software that runs it, which is exactly what building a drone swarm from scratch demands.
What I’m Building
I’m a firm believer in learning by building, breaking, and rebuilding. At Boeing, my day job is Environmental Control Systems (ECS) Analysis Engineer: resolving in-service safety problems to keep airplanes flying and everyone breathing onboard. Outside that, ggRover is my fun build, a semi-autonomous rover with an STM32 brain and a PS4 controller behind the wheel. GG Swarm started as my capstone project and outlived the semester: a GNN-based drone swarm design maturing from simulation toward hardware.
Beyond the Code
When I’m not at a terminal or a workbench, I’m usually out finding new experiences. I travel the Anthony Bourdain way: street-level, food-first, always open to the detour. That means multi-day backpacking trips in the Eastern Sierra, hawker stands over reservations, and a standing rule that history is better confronted than skipped. The shortlist never stays short for long: Mexico, Southeast Asia, the UK and Ireland, and Eastern Europe, with Hungary, Czechia, Slovenia, and Croatia all making their case.
Back home in downtown Long Beach, the other hobbies run in parallel: Tottenham on the couch in a Son #7 shirt, LA Galaxy when the schedule lines up, K-pop shows, TWICE and BLACKPINK live so far with Le Sserafim and aespa in the rotation, and a Steam Deck with a strategy-game problem, thousands of hours deep in Europa Universalis IV and Kerbal Space Program. I read physical books before their adaptations, so the source material always gets to spoil the screen version first.
If you want to talk robotics, history, K-pop, or soccer, feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn.