Alumni Spotlight: Ryan Shelley ’07

Ryan Shelley graduated from the Indiana Academy in 2007. At the Academy, he ran for the track team and played a lot of Ultimate Frisbee.

Ryan attended Purdue University, graduating in 2012 with a BS in Mechanical Engineering and minors in Economics and Management. At Purdue, he was a Resident Assistant in Tarkington Hall.

Ryan also participated in the co-op program as an undergraduate, working for NASA at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, TX. At NASA, he supported the Flight Activities Officer in Mission Control for Space Shuttle mission STS-127. He also configured ISS mockups for underwater spacewalk training in the Neutral Buoyancy Lab and designed a low-cost launch/entry spacesuit concept.

Ryan completed an MS in Mechanical Engineering in 2014 at University of Florida. During this time, he worked in the Precision Space Systems Lab to design and build a precision torsion pendulum for evaluating gravitational sensors for the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) satellite.

Ryan is currently a mechanical design engineer at Space Systems/Loral, the leading provider of geostationary commercial satellites. He is focused primarily on designing antenna subsystems for many satellite services, including broadband internet, television, and radio. He lives in Mountain View, CA with his wife Nicole and still plays a lot of Ultimate Frisbee.