Kam Modjtahedzadeh

EXPERIENCE

BOEING INTELLIGENCE & ANALYTICS | Systems Engineer

April 2023 – present | Huntsville, AL

• ► Jan 2024 – present; Associate, Analysis & Assessment
• ★ Recruited after graduate school to work as an analyst of Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) systems. Ended up becoming the main software developer, overseeing the master program for large-scale Excel spreadsheets (in order of 100 MB) containing complex simulated datasets.
• ★ Worked on the development of various scripts primarily with Python and Bash. Including but not limited to programs to plot interceptor trajectories or positional collisions, calculate reference frame transformations, compute results using output simulated data, and automate mundane tasks.
• ★ Analyzed simulation runs of the GMD system; e.g., analyzed trajectories, calculated distances, numerically found appropriate curves, and determined simulation fidelity.

RESEARCH

THE BOEING COMPANY | Heavenly Debris Clouds

Oct 2024 - June 2025 | Huntsville, AL

• Postulated that the debris of a heavenly spherical object will be distributed normally post breakup.
• Mathematically formulated a spherically symmetric post-impact debris model based on the NASA EVOLVE 4.0 framework.
• Computationally implemented the spherically symmetric model based on the Gaussian distribution postulate of fragments post-breakup.

KLOTZ LAB | Computational Polymer Physics

Jan 2021 - Nov 2022 | Long Beach, CA

• Wrote Python code simulating single polymer chains using Brownian dynamics, the Euler method, and numerical techniques. Option to configure it linearly or circularly, optional excluded volume with adjustable strength, FENE springs connecting the beads. Verified various scaling exponents.
• Worked on [\(2\)]catenane simulations using molecular dynamics. Concluded that short chain lengths are not good models for polymers and that hydrodynamic forces have minimal effect on poly[\(n\)]catenanes with relatively small \(n\).
• Ran growing self-avoiding walk simulations to model discrete worm-like chain polymers using Monte Carlo simulations. Derived relationships between persistence length and trapping, as well as trapping and radius of gyration. Concluded that square lattice has no effect on such systems.

AWARDS

• 2021    Gisela and Wilfried Eckhardt Endowed Summer Research Assistantship
• 2014    Phi Theta Kappa Honor Society Recognized Member

PUBLICATIONS

1. Topics in Computational Polymer Physics, master's thesis, California State University at Long Beach, 2023, [ProQuest].
2. Stability Analysis of Continuous-Time Linear Time-Invariant Systems, University of California at Santa Barbara, 2020, [arXiv].
3. Wavelength and Refractive Indices from Interferometry, University of California at Santa Barbara, 2019, [arXiv].