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Above: Céu Gómez-Faulk holding a RAAVEN drone.
Header Image: Céu Gómez-Faulk, center right, looking up at a RAAVEN drone during a deployment.

Céu Gómez-Faulk is standing outside a gas station in rural Oklahoma waiting for a sound most people hope to never hear: tornado sirens.

The clouds above are an otherworldly shade of green – a signal that supercell thunderstorms that spawn tornadoes may be in the area.

An aerospace PhD student at the University of Colorado Boulder, Gómez-Faulk is part of a multi-university team of students and faculty working to improve human understanding and predictions of tornadic storms by pursuing them with fixed-wing drones and weather-sensing equipment.

“It’s awe-inspiring,” Gómez-Faulk said. “There’s so much energy involved in these processes, and they’re so unpredictable. It’s frightening but also inspiring.”

Gómez-Faulk has been interested in drones from a young age. In high school, he competed in drone racing tournaments when quad-copters were still new and largely out of reach for consumers.

So he constructed his own.

“We were building these aircraft out of RC plane parts,” Gómez-Faulk said. “The control systems to design quad-copters weren’t really available to the hobbyist market yet.”

He was captivated by the components he was dissecting and wanted to know more. The child of academics – both of his parents have worked as college professors – Gómez-Faulk started reading research papers, leading him to apply at ����������ý�Ļ���Ʒ.

“I loved airplanes and everything about them. I always knew I wanted to do aeronautical engineering. Looking around on the internet I found the Research and Engineering Center for Unmanned Vehicles and specifically Professor Eric Frew,” Gómez-Faulk said.

When he arrived in Boulder as a freshman, he sought out the RECUV lab and convinced them to hire him as a student employee within his first month on campus.

“I didn’t really give them a choice, but I couldn’t tell you why they hired me,” he said.

Lab Manager Michael Rhodes has the answer.

“To have gone on his own in high school and looked up research papers, that’s unusual,” Rhodes said. “But really, it was his enthusiasm. He had flying experience, but at the undergrad level, it’s not what you’ve done. It’s enthusiasm that matters.”

Madison Ritsch, Céu Gómez-Faulk, and Michael Rhodes working on a RAAVEN drone during a deployment in Tornado Alley.

Gómez-Faulk worked as an active contributor to the lab and in 2023 was able to join in field storm research, as the team fanned out across Tornado Alley.

“We’re using uncrewed aerial systems and autonomy to improve our understanding of the atmosphere. Doing field campaigns is what sets ����������ý�Ļ���Ʒ apart. We have to take our algorithms into the field and see how they perform. It makes the work feel very important. It is not abstract,” Gómez-Faulk said.

After completing his bachelor’s degree, Gómez-Faulk wanted to have a more active role in designing research, and decided to continue on to a PhD, with Frew and Professor Brian Argrow serving as his co-advisors.

“Research and development explores new frontiers, and I wanted to have more of a guiding hand. As an undergrad, you’re doing lower-level work. I wanted to be part of the bigger picture, what is being targeted and why. It led me pretty naturally to the doctoral program,” he said.

Now in his second year as a grad student, Gómez-Faulk is working to advance the autonomous flight algorithms that allow ����������ý�Ļ���Ʒ’s systems to navigate in extreme weather conditions. It is challenging work that requires advanced engineering skills.

“I see myself as a career scientist, and we’re working toward better wind sensing,” Gómez-Faulk said. “This is the way to get there. It’s very tangible and it really matters.”