My name is Thomas Gleiforst and I am a second year CS and CpE student at MST. I always knew that I was interested in Engineering of some sort. In 6th grade I told my teachers I was going to be an electrical engineer, however, it was that summer that I discovered programming. I taught myself how to program using Codecademy and instantly fell in love with it.

I was very involved in high school and graduated 4th in my class. I was the Co-President of the Science Club, the President of the Robotics Club, the President of the Technology Student Association (TSA), the App Developer for the Student Council, and a member of the National Honor Society and Science National Honor Society.

I took my clubs very seriously, and dedicated everything I had to their success. I coordinated meetings, met with sponsors, and called businesses asking for donations of everything from food to robotics parts. I always seek out leadership in everything I do, as I feel like I am contributing the most when I am helping other people.

The summers of my highschool experience were filled with exciting camps and competitions. I went to an engineering camp at SIUE where I learned to solder for the first time, a computer science camp at MST where I first explored all the different sides of computer science and got a taste of what life would be like here, a national competition for TSA where I got to compete against a ton of other highschool students, and the National Congress of Future Scientists and Technologists where I was immersed in an arena full of like minded individuals and attended presentations from speakers at the forefront of innovation.

The computer science classes in my highschool were limited, so I was very excited about going into college to be able to jump into a formal computer science education. As soon as I got here I joined the Mars Rover Design Team and the Association of Computing and Machinery's Competition Special Interest Group (ACM SIG-Comp). Going into this year I became the Basestation and Signals Team Lead for Mars Rover and the Eventsmaster for ACM-COMP, and I am looking forward to what I can do to improve these organizations

In Fall of 2018, I applied to the NSF SStem Scholarship at my school. Starting Spring of 2019, I have been a part of this amazing cohort of scholars. We are the first group of SStem Scholars, so the program is still being ironed out, but I am looking forward to contributing to the PERCEPOLIS research project and getting to work with this group of smart students and knowledgeable advisors.

For more information be sure to check out my Projects page, or contact me and I would love to chat.