The team
We are about 12 students. We meet every week and work on both the engine design and the research behind it.
Syed Aabis Akhtar
Founder and project lead
Built LOX/IPA feed-system hardware and helped assemble and test a liquid rocket engine with Liquid Rocketry at Illinois. Co-founded a payments startup in high school that raised over $50,000 and built developer tools with 150,000+ downloads. Now bringing together the team, funding and manufacturing partners to get Resonance hot-fired.
Rehaan Hingora
Design lead
Aerospace engineering sophomore and CAD course assistant working in Siemens NX. In hybrid rocket R&D, designed a diaphragm to improve mixing in the aft combustion chamber and defended it in reviews with faculty and graduate mentors. Now exploring rotating detonation engines from both the design and physics sides.
Dilan Singh
Injector design
Worked in propulsion and systems engineering on hydrogen-electric aircraft development in New Zealand. AIAA technical lead applying AI/ML to optimize micro-turbojet performance, and earned a leadership award in a NASA-judged engineering program involving 200+ students. Raised $10K+ in external funding for a student-led initiative in high school and now leads technical teams and industry-facing engineering initiatives at Illinois.
Aaqil Riaz
Predetonator design
Manufactured flight-critical hardware for SpaceX Starlink to 0.0005-inch tolerances and won collegiate drone engineering design honors. Leads guidance, navigation and control for AERII and stability and controls for SAE Aero, building state-space models and 400-run Monte Carlo simulators. Works on predetonator design for Resonance.