Meet your group of space nerds for 2023-24!
George Burns
President
George Joined BristolSEDS in 2021. In his first year as a electrical and electronics engineering student, after a year of leading a Cansat team, he joined PROVE Pathfinder as an electronics engineer. In his second year he was promoted to the role of lead electronics engineer of PROVE Pathfinder and attended their thermal vacuum campaign in Belgium. He is excited to bring new and fresh ideas to SEDS and is privileged to be this year’s president.
João David Viera Neves Cunha E Silva
Vice President
I’m João David, and I’m thrilled to introduce myself as your Vice President. I joined this fantastic society in 2022 and have been actively engaged ever since. My journey here began with the exhilarating experience of participating in the UKSEDS Olympus Rover Trials (ORT), where I discovered my passion for space exploration and technology. As your Vice President, I am committed to fostering our shared enthusiasm for space, science, and engineering, and I can’t wait to continue this amazing journey with all of you.
Tom Snelling
Treasurer
Tom joined BristolSEDS back in 2020. Since joining the society, he has entered the UKSEDS National Rocketry Championship in 2020 and 2021 (winning 1st place as the team lead for Gyrocket in 2021) and Mach23 (team Prometheus). He has also attended the National Student Space Conference for the last 2 years in London and Manchester. Last year he acted as an adviser to the committee working on a range of activities such as organising workshops, overseeing all rocketry activities, arranging afterhours workshop access, new financial systems and improving our relationship with the faculty. He now runs the UKSEDS National Rocketry Championship and sit on the UK Launch Education Working Group all whilst project managing PROVE Pathfinder, the University of Bristol’s satellite research team, alongside acting as treasurer for BristolSEDS this year!
David Reid
External Liason Officer
David graduated from the MEng programme in Aerospace engineering in 2020, having joined BristolSEDS in the second year of his undergraduate study way back in 2017. In this year, he was the chief engineer for Team Cosmos, taking part in the internal CanSat competition. In the following year (2018), he served as advisor to the committee, in an attempt to bring liquid propulsion to Bristol with a proposal and sizing for the monopropellant thruster – though the society was not very active at this time and the project quickly fizzed out. In 2022, he served as the first Postgraduate Officer on the committee, increasing this communities engagement with the society. Now in 2023, he is the incoming External Liaison Officer – and has utilised his global space network to organise a host of exciting talks, panels and workshops for the coming year.
James Hollingdale
Secretary
James is a BristolSEDS veteran, first joining in 2019 and then sitting on the committee since 2020, where he has held the positions of Vice-President, Treasurer and most recently President for the 22/23 academic year. James has had a persistent focus on rocketry, having overseen the very first National Rocketry Championship launches in 2020/21 during the dreaded covid years, and the launches in 2021/22 (including the winning team led by Tom). He also spearheaded BristolSED’s entry into the Mach series of competitions, having led the 2021/22 team and co-led the 2022/23 teams up in Scotland. This year, James is focused on utilising his position on the RAeS Space Early Careers Subcommittee to help develop the societies forays into student designed hybrid/liquid propulsion. As well as working with RAeS, James also works on PROVE Pathfinder in the University CubeSat lab as an electronics engineer.
Aarini Devasar
Equality Officer
Aarini is a 2nd year Aerospace engineering student who joined the society in 2022. She participated in the UKSEDS Olympus Rover Trials 2022 working on Team Atlas‘s electronics sub-team. Passionate about promoting diversity and inclusion in the workspace she is now serving as the equality officer for BristolSEDS this year!
Nick Balboa
Events Secretary
Nick joined Bristol SEDS in 2021 and has since joined several rocketry competitions. In 2021 Nick was the structures leader of the NRC Team Pink Freyr and in 2022 was asked to be the Team lead and Avionics lead for the NRC Team Firefly, which achieved one of the highest build report scores in the championship (94/100). He’s now helping to plan social events and extra-curricular activities for the upcoming year.
Louis Timperly
Postgraduate Officer
