Andrew Jan Choutka
ajchoutka@gmail.com · github.com/HonzikChoutka · LinkedIn
Aerospace engineering student at Purdue, instrument-rated pilot, and founder. I build things that have to work in the real world: aircraft structures, rocket igniters, escape rooms, software, and now a company.
Founding
Entrepreneur First, Fellow (Founder) · August 2026 – January 2027
- Selected for Entrepreneur First, the talent investor that backs exceptional individuals before they have a team or an idea, to found a company from a blank page.
- Building a hardware company from first principles through EF's cohort: finding a co-founder, pressure-testing problems worth solving, and turning engineering judgment into a venture.
- Brings an engineer's habit of pairing ambition with rigor: prototype fast, measure honestly, and keep the airworthiness mindset that nothing ships until it is safe.
Education
Purdue University · B.S. Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering · expected May 2028 · GPA 3.95
Relevant courses: Structural Analysis, Thermodynamics, Signal Analysis, Fluid Mechanics, Differential Equations, Electricity and Magnetism, Intro to Aerospace Design
Experience
AI Research Trainer, Handshake AI · April 2026 – Present
- Engineer complex, multi-step research prompts that benchmark and stress-test frontier AI web-search agents.
- Design optimized search trajectories that become training data aimed at sharper reasoning and information retrieval.
Structures & Avionics Engineering Intern, Western Aircraft, Inc. · June 2025 – August 2025
- Produced engineering drawings for major structural repairs and alterations on the Pilatus PC-12, Gulfstream G550, and Beechcraft King Air in SolidWorks, holding to structural and airworthiness requirements throughout.
- Developed specialized tooling and drawings for the Pilatus PC-24, Pilatus PC-12, and Dassault Falcon.
- Worked alongside maintenance technicians, tool room and warehouse managers, safety leads, avionics technicians, and sales managers to understand the cross-functional reality of maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO).
Propulsion Engineer, Purdue Space Program · August 2024 – October 2025
- On a team of five, designed a gaseous hydrogen / gaseous oxygen torch igniter with a focus on thermodynamics and heat transfer.
- Wrote a Python library that automates NASA CEA (Chemical Equilibrium with Applications) and implements the Bartz correlation.
Volunteer Counselor and Group Leader, Camp Invention · Summers 2018 – 2019, 2022 – 2023
- Taught and mentored more than 20 students in STEM through the engineering design process.
- Led a series of engineering-focused projects that turned curiosity into finished builds.
Flying
- Private Pilot Certificate, Airplane Single-Engine Land · April 2025
- Instrument Rating, Airplane · November 2025
- 200+ hours in the Piper PA-28-161 Warrior, PA-28-181 Archer, and Cessna 172 · commercial checkride planned February 2027
Research
AP Capstone Research: Using Machine Learning to Model the Human Run · August 2023 – April 2024
- Built a machine learning model to predict the motion of Olympic runners and evaluated its potential for athlete performance optimization.
Projects
This site · 2024 – present
- Rebuilt in 2026 as an illustrated Piper Warrior instrument panel with live weather, a Hobbs meter fed by my real flight ledger, and a sectional chart of everywhere I have flown; built on Next.js with a neovim-first writing CLI and no database.
Escape Room · July 2023 – August 2024
- Planned and built a complete in-person escape room from scratch, solving problems within tight budget and space constraints.
- Designed and implemented the embedded programming and electrical systems behind the puzzles.
Skills
- Software: SolidWorks, MATLAB, NX, Teamcenter (digital threads, digital twins), Claude Code, Pi Agent, agentic workflows, Blender, Autodesk Fusion
- Languages: JavaScript, TypeScript, TSX, Python, Java, C/C++
- Tools and frameworks: Git, Node.js, React, Next.js, Google Cloud, Neovim, Firebase, Postgres
- Spoken: English (fluent), Spanish (intermediate), Czech (basic)
Interests
Rock climbing, travel ice hockey, competitive gymnastics, drone and RC plane building and flying, photography, videography and VFX, 3D printing, general aviation