NEPTUN Biography



JOSEPH FLAHERTY, Coo coo for cocoa puffs



Major: Mechanical Engineering & Physics

College/Employer: NEU

Year of Graduation: 2018

Picture of Joseph Flaherty

Brief Biographical Sketch:

I'm a sophomore Mechanical Engineering & Physics student from New Hampshire. At Northeastern, I'm heavily involved in the clubs AIAA and ASME. AIAA, or "space club", is a rocketry-focused club full of aerospace engineering enthusiasts. ASME is a national organization for mechanical engineers. I teach a SOLIDWORKS course for ASME to help train other mechanical engineering students to use the program in the workplace. Other than pitching in a baseball game or eating mac & cheese, teaching is my favorite thing to do. I love trying to explain concepts simply and helping students try new, cool things. I'm extremely excited about this class because we can jump right into having fun with the software without having to cover the difficult, less interesting skills that engineering students need.



Past Classes

  (Look at the class archive for more.)


Introduction to Rocketry in Splash Spring 2015
What goes up, must come down, but it has to get up there in the first place! Surprisingly enough (or not), rocketry is more than putting a motor on the rear, gluing some fins on, pointing the nose in the general direction of "up", and hoping for the best. This course will cover an introduction to model rocketry, as well as an introduction to full-scale launches. You'll find that many of the same principles that apply to model rockets that you can build in your garage apply to their larger cousins that carry spacecraft into orbit! Students will get hands on experience with materials used to build model rockets, and use a computer program to design their own! A companion course to "Introduction to Orbital Mechanics", but it is not required to take both.


Into to SOLIDWORKS and Computer Aided Engineering in Splash Spring 2015
You'll use SOLIDWORKS 3D design software to assemble 3D models of real-world products. In doing so, you'll learn how and why engineers use computers to create objects virtually before spending money to create them in real life. You'll also use some of the software's most powerful features to quickly simulate the physics of a double pendulum and create photo-realistic images of virtual designs. --For a quick demo of what a professional user can do with SOLIDWORKS, watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgyrGsAdUPE


Assemblies: The Fun Part of Computer Aided Design in Splash Fall 2014
Students will use SOLIDWORKS 3D design software to virtually assemble the components of a car jack, a fan, a robot arm, and some other interesting machines. After creating these assemblies, students will use SOLIDWORKS to render photo-realistic images of the assemblies. The class may also make animations of some assemblies. For example, a student could take home a video of his/her virtual robot arm in action. --For a quick demo of what a professional user can do with SOLIDWORKS, watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgyrGsAdUPE