Morgan Smith (B.S. ’25, physics) wasn’t your typical undergraduate student. Before he even began his undergraduate degree at the University of Maryland at age 29, he’d traveled the United States and dedicated six years to serving his country in the military.

After graduating high school in 2010, Smith worked various odd jobs then spent two years traveling around the country, from Colorado to Florida to northern Virginia, where he enrolled in community college and enlisted in the U.S. Air Force. He spent the next six years in the military as a cryptologic language analyst, helping the intelligence community with Arabic translation and communication. But he always had goals beyond his service.Morgan Smith

Growing up near Chattanooga, Tennessee, Smith dreamed of becoming an aerospace engineer. As a kid, he built remote-controlled airplanes with his friends and read books about everything from rocket ships to the Wright brothers. He won a prize in his high school science fair for a project analyzing airfoil shapes using a wind tunnel.

“My goal was to return to my scientific passions,” he said.

Now, after completing his physics degree and a minor in computer science at UMD, Smith works at NASA as a software engineer, tying together his interests in science and public service.

“What’s most rewarding to me is working toward a mission that is aligned with expanding humanity’s knowledge,” he said, “in bettering society and solving the puzzles necessary to do that.”

A career takes flight

You might think that an airman with a passion for planes would work in aeronautics for the Air Force, but that wasn’t the case for Smith.

“I wanted to gain a good skill while I was enlisted,” he said.

For him, that meant mastering a foreign language.

Smith earned an associate’s degree in Arabic language and foreign literature from the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center. While enlisted, he also earned an associate’s degree in intelligence studies and technology from the Community College of the Air Force and a bachelor’s degree in political science from Arizona State University.

He reached the rank of technical sergeant-select and spent his days translating documents and communications. Then, more than five years into his career, COVID-19 happened.

“Suddenly, I had a lot of time to think and evaluate where I’ve been. I remembered how much passion and joy I got in my science classes, especially physics,” he said. “Physics encompasses so much of the science about our universe. In high school, I liked it because I thought that planes were cool. But as I got older, I began to realize that, actually, the whole universe is cool.”

So, Smith reoriented his career toward science. It wasn’t easy, since he had forgotten quite a bit of math during his time in the Air Force.

“It took a lot of personal time and dedication to get those skills back. I actually used Khan Academy,” he said, laughing.

But his efforts paid off when he was admitted to UMD for the fall of 2021.

Sticking the landing at UMD

Smith didn’t find it unusual to be an undergraduate student in his 30s; instead, he says it was an asset.

“Being a little older and assured in what I was doing and having learned from past experiences, I was able to be disciplined and hopefully provide mentorship and direction to other students,” Smith said.

One of his most rewarding experiences was designing hands-on lab lessons for quantum science and technology courses under the mentorship of Alicia Kollár, a Chesapeake Assistant Professor of Physics Endowed Chair, and Alessandro Restelli, an associate research scientist at the Joint Quantum Institute. The lessons, which he designed in collaboration with the Institute for Robust Quantum Simulation, introduced students to the tools used in real-world quantum science, such as interferometers and vector network analyzers.

In 2023, Smith joined the NASA Pathways program, which is designed as a pipeline to full-time employment with the space agency. At NASA, he works on a variety of computing initiatives, including encryption, containerization and satellite telemetry. One of his current projects uses machine learning to determine whether anomalies detected by satellites are nefarious actors or otherwise warrant further investigation.

Whether he is learning coding languages or new physics concepts, Smith believes his experience mastering foreign languages helps.

“Learning all these different programming languages on the fly was definitely linked to being able to learn foreign languages,” he said. “It’s all about picking up patterns.”

Smith continues to exercise that muscle in his free time. He’s learning Japanese and even took up two Japanese forms of martial arts. He trains in karate and a traditional weapons art called Katori Shinto Ryu, which involves swords and bo staffs, practicing daily and formally training three times a week.

As he navigates his career in science, he believes his ability to learn on the fly will be a great asset. And wherever that career takes him, he wants to ensure that his work benefits society.

“As you grow older, you think a little more about the world and your place in it,” he said. “So having values and a mission aligned with what I believe in is hugely important to me.”

Written by Jason P. Dinh