about

my name is erik halliwell. i currently reside in edmonton, on earth. i'm completing my master's at ualberta in electrical engineering. if you think this website is ugly, congrats! we share something in common. that was the idea.

in grad school, i've

• been honored with the 2025 edition of UofA's award for the top MSc student in my department (ECE) for my work on space-based navigation systems
• spent time on my master's research, which explores the use of optical methods like satellite laser ranging and laser communication systems to do spacecraft orbit determination - trying to out-do radio-based systems by 5 order of magnitude
• worked on PEPPER-X - a team I led which flight-qualified two energetic particle precipitation scientific instruments on-board NASA's RockSat-X sounding rocket. they'll now fly on the $20MM RADICALS microsatellite in 2027
• served as the lead teaching assistant for the 4th-year computer engineering capstone course (and won two awards doing it)
• built and flying a LoRa-based communications system for a stratospheric weather balloon which i tracked with APRS (callsign VA6CSC, mostly on 2m but sometimes 70cm)
• hucked backflips on skis with my friends and built an instagram page with 65k followers in the process

before that, i was doing my undergrad (also at ualberta) in engineering physics, and

• created open-source deployable solar panels (flown on 3 satellites and soon a 4th)
• was a primary operator for alberta's first satellite, Ex-Alta 1, built by AlbertaSat. i first got started with them back in high school and that's where my love of space really kicked off.
• got involved with free-space optical communication systems by building one that implemented LDPC FEC to achieve BER <10e-6 in LEO-to-Earth levels of emulated turbulence
• worked for two summers at G2V Optics building LED-based solar simulator calibration tools
• designed my own guitar pedals with the Pod/ICE Incubator, winning best hardware hack at the 2021 ualberta hackathon
• drove 35 hrs to/from eastern canada to test a multispectral imager that me and my friends built on-board a canadian/french space agency balloon
• rocked out as the guitarist/band coodinator for the Engineering Physics Club
• got paid to run north america's largest competitive dodgeball league, the ualberta-residence-based Lister Dodgeball League
• consumed ~25kg of coffee (yes, i tracked it)

on holidays, i'll be out spending time in the canadian rockies, skiing (backcountry and resort), leading my slo-pitch team to their 4th ualberta intramurals title in a row, or browsing wikipedia with the goal of getting on jeopardy one day.

interviews/media/links

(07-25) Students reach for the stars with NASA launch

(05-25) Congratulations to the recipients of the Graduate Student Research Excellence Awards

(03-25) Outstanding Student Presentation Award from AGU in Space Physics and Aeronomy

(11-24) Innovator Spotlight: Erik Halliwell

(09-24) Students launch experiment into space on NASA rocket

(09-24) AlbertaSat Member Spotlight

(08-24) NASA liftoff sends University of Alberta experiment into space

(08-24) Mission accomplished: NASA launches U of A experiment into space

(07-24) Graduate Student Teaching Award

(03-24) UofA, SAIT become new sites for NATO defense research

(08-19) Open cockpit day recognized U of A student achievements in space

(05-19) The Life and Death of a Very Good Satellite

(05-18) UofA-based team behind satellite to predict and monitor wildfires in Alberta

(05-18) U of A student-led satellite teams helps kids shoot for the stars

(01-18) Mechanical engineering students sail to the stratosphere