Hello there 👋
Hey — I’m a mechanical engineer with hands-on experience designing, manufacturing, and testing robotic and electromechanical systems.
My research is on how fish swim, and what that can teach us about three things: building more efficient ship propulsion, generating energy from ocean waves, and understanding how fish swim efficiently in groups. Over the last three years I’ve done this work at the Unsteady Flow Interactions Laboratory at Lehigh with Dr. Keith Moored, and at the Lauder Laboratory at Harvard with Dr. George Lauder.
Outside the lab, I design carbon-fiber suspension for our Formula SAE race car, and I led the mechanical design of OSPREY, Lehigh’s first nanosatellite. I also spent a summer at Aerotargets International running wind-tunnel tests on a UAV.
I’m from Kazakhstan, and I ski ⛷ and ride horses 🐎 whenever I get the chance — ideally in the Tian Shan mountains back home.
News
September 2026: 🎤 Presented “Passive Swimming Dynamics in a Thrust-Producing Vortex Wake” at the ONR MURI Annual Review Meeting at Lehigh University.
August 2026: 🐟 Wrapped up my summer at the Lauder Laboratory, Harvard University, studying how fish gain thrust from the wake of a leading swimmer.
May 2026: Started a summer research internship at the Lauder Laboratory, Harvard University, working on bio-inspired swimming and hydrodynamics 🎓.
November 2025: 🏆 Won the Best Undergraduate Research Poster Award at ASME IMECE for presenting “Uncovering the Fluid–Structure Interactions of Wave-Assisted Propulsion via Cyber-Physical Fluid Dynamics.”
November 2025: Presented “Design and Validation of a Cyber-Physical Fluid Dynamics System for Bio-Inspired Propulsion Studies” at the APS Division of Fluid Dynamics (DFD).
October 2025: Presented WAP project progress at the Annual ONR MURI Meeting at Lehigh University, showcasing experimental validation and control integration of the cyber-physical testbed.
May 2025: Awarded the Rossin Research Fellowship to work in the Unsteady Flow Interactions Lab on cyber-physical systems for wave-assisted propulsion (WAP).
December 2024: 🚀 Our team raised $200K in funding to build and launch OSPREY, Lehigh’s first Nanosatellite 🛰️.
September 2024: Started working on the Bio-Inspired Riverine Power Generation Project 🌊.
August 2024: Started a new position as MakerSpace Coordinator at Design Labs @ Lehigh University!
August 2024: Presented my work, “Design and Implementation of a Dual-Axis Pitch and Heave Setup for Bio-Propulsion Studies”, at the Mountain Top Research Conference at Lehigh 🎤.
July 2024: Started working with Aerotargets International ✈️.
May 2024: Awarded the prestigious STEM-SI Scholarship to work as an Undergraduate Research Intern over the summer 🏅.
April 2024: Received the Michael Levin Advanced Technology Award for Best Technological Startup at Lehigh 🏆.
December 2023: Began research at the Unsteady Flow Interactions Laboratory 🔬.
November 2023: Our team submitted the first proposal to the NASA CubeSat Launch Initiative Program to get funding and a spot on the SpaceX rocket to launch a satellite in space.
August 2023: Started my Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering at Lehigh University 👨💻.
June 2023: Won a $5,000 grant and was recognized as a Top-3 SpaceTech Startup at the Central Asia Venture Forum 🚀.
May 2023: Graduated from Nazarbayev Intellectual School of Physics and Mathematics in Kokshetau, Kazakhstan 🎓🇰🇿.