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When Marcos Sanson graduates next spring, he will have built an impressive resume of undergraduate research that includes a stint with the U.S. Air Force.

In March, the computer science senior earned the Goldwater Scholarship, awarded to students pursuing scientific research careers.

This past summer, Sanson interned at the Air Force Research Laboratory in New Mexico, where he worked on advancing artificial intelligence for spacecraft control. Sanson said the research he was involved with will support the U.S. Space Force.

“We were working on reinforcement learning for controlling spacecraft," he said. "Let’s say you have two satellites in space and you want to refuel them. You want to do it autonomously, without humans controlling them. 

"With current methods, it takes one path: the optimal path. What we’re trying to do is give it multiple paths that you can pick and choose from. It’s providing a diversity of solutions.” 

Sanson has attended and presented his research at several U.S. and international conferences, most recently in Kyoto, Japan, where he discussed his work on evolution research through the lens of a computer scientist. During the rest of the five-day conference, Sanson said he absorbed as much as he could from professional and student researchers. 

Now, Sanson is focusing on his senior capstone project, while working at a part-time internship for Huntington Ingalls Industries, the nation's largest military shipbuilder.

“Currently, I’m working with reinforcement learning, a type of machine learning," he said.

Following graduation, Sanson said he plans to pursue a doctoral degree and would like to work at a national laboratory.