Brendan Ritchey

Second-year mechanical engineering student at Duke, pursuing an aerospace certificate. I like building airframes and field hardware, the kind that ends up somewhere real. So far that has meant a river valley in Bolivia, a race car in Tucson, and 30,000 feet over west Texas.

B.S.E. Mechanical Engineering, Duke 2029
Certificate in Aerospace Engineering
Based in Durham, North Carolina
Currently: Duke Aero avionics, Duke Drone Racing, Pratt makerspaces
brendan.ritchey@duke.edu

42 m suspended pedestrian footbridge, 2026

Pili Pili Bajo, Chuquisaca, Bolivia. Media Manager and construction crew on DukeEngage, with Duke Engineers for International Development and Engineers in Action. 42 m span, 14 students, 8 weeks, serving about 250 people.

The Rio Pescado splits Pili Pili Bajo down the middle, and for months at a time the crossing washes out and the community has no way across. I spent eight weeks there building a 42 meter suspended footbridge with the community and documenting the whole thing. On site I worked abutment excavation, foundation and tier construction, tower masonry, anchor construction, cable hoisting and walkway decking. As Media Manager I owned the media plan and shot list for EIA's deliverables and ran the photography, videography and drone capture in the field.

Fixed-wing UAV airframes, 2025 to 2026

Two builds, two structural approaches. Airframe design, fabrication, electronics integration and flight testing.

Build one, a laser-cut foam board STOL trainer with a wing section traced from the Zenith STOL CH 701, a 10 in propeller in puller configuration, and a sacrificial breakaway nose that kept a crash to one part and a few minutes. Roughly ten flights on one airframe, and it cleared the 50 m required for the grade.

Build two, a Flightory Stork: 1620 mm span, S3021 section at aspect ratio 8.3, pusher prop behind a V-tail, printed in pre-foamed PLA with PETG where parts carry load. Registered and flying under FAA Remote ID with a Ruko R111S module. Flown twice in ten days, neither flight clean, with ground testing as the gap.

Descent energy harvesting for a 5U CubeSat, 2025 to 2026

Kratos payload on Devil's Advocate, Duke AERO, IREC 2026. I proposed the pop-out flaps and the paired layout, designed the housing, and did the CAD with my teammates. The blades were a team effort and the power electronics were the ECE members of the subteam.

I worked on a team of three turning the CubeSat's descent into battery charge, inside a 10 x 10 x 6.5 cm bay, designed around an 18 ft/s descent rate taken from the previous year's telemetry. Two fans drive three-phase low-KV generators rectified through a six-diode bridge into the payload battery, deployed in pairs so the rotor torque cancels and the payload's axial stability is preserved. It worked on the bench. At IREC, in 115 degree heat, the flaps never opened, a failure our own CDR had predicted for printed PLA. The vehicle placed 3rd of 8 in 30K Solid SRAD.

Automated periodic egg cooker, 2025

EGR 101 at the Duke Pratt School of Engineering, client-sponsored by David Bradway of Duke Biomedical Engineering, built at The Foundry. Technical lead on a five-person team: electronics and Arduino control, CAD, and most of the fabrication, plus the business and IP research.

A published method holds an egg yolk near 67 C by cycling it between a 27 C bath and boiling water every two minutes for thirty-two minutes. We automated it with a servo-driven transfer mechanism, Arduino sequencing, and a 1000 W element after two 100 W elements proved too slow. Against six criteria the machine passed three, failed capacity and cost, and left the cook time about ten minutes beyond the paper's figure.

Mechanical design intern, Crown Concepts, 2024

Tucson, Arizona. 3D scanning evaluation, CAD, and fitted parts for custom automotive products. I scanned Crown Racing's Radicals into point clouds with a Shining 3D Einstar at 3.0 mm point distance, 3,285 frames and roughly 90 GB across 8 scans, using adhesive markers on glossy bodywork so the scanner could register frames. I ran the evaluation of the scanner and wrote the recommendations, and designed a mount adapting a Milwaukee tool battery into a jump starter.

Snowbank ski phone battery and grip, 2024

Entrepreneurship program, The Gregory School, Tucson. CEO, and the designer behind the connector, retention and battery packaging. An insulated lithium cell under a leather skin, a twist and lock bayonet connector that works with gloves on, an elastic finger strap and a cord-lock tether. Verified below freezing, costed at $33.67 against a $49.99 retail price.

Capabilities

Fixed-wing airframe design and build, laser-cut foam and printed foamed-PLA structures, propulsion and control-surface integration, flight testing, FAA TRUST certified. 5 in racing airframe assembly and Betaflight tuning. CAD modeling and iteration, sheet metal and flat pattern workflows, design for manufacture, 3D scanning. FDM slicing and profile tuning. Arduino control sequencing, servo actuation, current-tiered power layout. Java and C++. Pratt Student Shop certified on the manual lathe, mill, drill press and bandsaws. Laser cutting, woodworking and rapid prototyping across Duke's Foundry and POD makerspaces. Requirement decomposition, morph charts, Pugh screening and weighted scoring, technical memos. Excavation, foundations, masonry, anchor construction and cable rigging. UAS capture and flight planning, survey documentation, photo and video direction.

Experience

2026 to present, Technical Officer, Duke Drone Racing
2026 to present, Avionics and Separation Subteam, Duke Aero
2026 to present, Makerspace Laboratory Assistant, Duke Pratt School of Engineering
2026 to present, Member, Duke Engineers for International Development
2026, Media Manager, Engineers in Action and Duke Engineers for International Development
2025 to 2026, Payload Subteam, Duke Aero
2024, Mechanical Design Intern, Crown Concepts
2024, CEO, Snowbank