Oskari Vakki
Systems engineering and technology transition at The Aerospace Corporation.
Hi, I'm Oskari. I run the TRL Bootcamp program at The Aerospace Corporation — a joint program with AFRL/SpaceWERX that helps small commercial space companies move their technology toward operational missions. The work spans systems engineering (where does a technology really sit on the readiness curve?), program management (coordinating across Aerospace's engineering disciplines), and translation between commercial founders and government program managers.
I'm pursuing an M.S. in Systems Engineering at UCLA with an AI/ML focus, and I think about how engineering organizations can be more honest about what it takes for technologies to transition. A satellite is just metal in orbit 🛰; the interesting question is what emergent system behavior we're trying to produce.
I built trlscale.com, a public TRL self-assessment tool, and co-authored a paper on the TRL Bootcamp framework at the 22nd Annual Acquisition Research Symposium.
Currently
- Running the TRL Bootcamp cohort at Aerospace.
- Finishing graduate coursework at UCLA.
- Thinking about evaluation frameworks for AI-enabled space systems.