Alumni Spotlight – Tim Kreutzfeldt

Former Wake physics student Tim Kreutzfeldt is now a software engineer working at Lockheed Martin in the Advanced Technology Laboratory. In this interview, Professor Jed Macosko discusses with Tim his career path and how his education helped prepare him.

Prof. Macosko: How did Wake Forest Physics help you get where you are today?

Tim: My career path has been very erratic. Since my time as a student at Wake Forest, my academic and professional focus has spanned many areas including experimental biophysics, nuclear engineering, rotorcraft design, turbulence modeling, wind tunnel testing, software development, and radar engineering. The ability to quickly come up to speed in a new research area has been a valuable skill for me, and I owe much of that to the foundation built while I was a physics major at Wake Forest. The physics academic curriculum provided me with the math and science fundamentals that have allowed me to excel in a broad range of disciplines. Furthermore, working as an undergraduate researcher in Dr. George Holzwarth’s lab helped me develop literacy for reading research papers and experience collecting and analyzing experimental data.

Prof. Macosko: What are you doing now career-wise?

Tim: I am a software engineer at Lockheed Martin working in the Advanced Technology Laboratory, which is an interdisciplinary research lab that performs R&D for technologies with a low technology readiness level. In my current role, I am the software lead for a program developing machine learning solutions for a radar classification system. I am also pursuing independent research applying machine learning techniques to turbulence modeling and computational fluid dynamics. One of the most appealing aspects of my job is getting to apply my skills and past experiences to a variety of different application spaces.