Daniel C. Mao
West Vancouver, BC. Student builder and photographer: high power rocketry, robotics, research, flying, photography and videography.
About: Hi, i'm Daniel.
Student, builder and photographer from west vancouver, bc.
Engineering, physics and a camera
Student at Collingwood School in West Vancouver, class of 2027, working toward aerospace engineering. My work sits where physics, computing and hands-on hardware meet, and outside of that I work behind a camera.
Each stretch of this world is one thing I spend my time on. Scroll to walk through them.
Rocketry: Lead the Team.
I lead my school's high power rocketry club. we fly at launch canada against university teams.
- Role
- Team Lead
- Since
- Sept 2024
- Competition
- Launch Canada
- Certification
- CAR Level 1, in progress
Team Lead, since September 2024
Team Lead of my school's high power rocketry club since September 2024. We design, build and fly competition rockets at Launch Canada, where most of the field is university teams. My technical focus is avionics: onboard electronics, sensors, and the simulations and ML models we use to predict flight.
When I took over, work routed through me and stalled whenever I was not available. I restructured the club into specialty subteams, each with a trained lead who teaches their own members, and moved into a supervising role. The team now works in parallel, moves faster, and catches problems earlier.
Skills
- Team leadership and delegation
- Restructuring a team into specialty subteams
- Training and mentoring subteam leads
- Project planning to competition deadlines
- Avionics integration and onboard electronics
- Sensor systems and flight data
- Flight simulation (OpenRocket, RASAero II)
- Machine learning models of flight behaviour
- Working to competition rules (Launch Canada DTEG)
- Launch operations and safety procedures
Astraeus: Reach Apogee.
Two rockets. one lesson about a single eye nut.
- Length
- 2.21 m
- Diameter
- 108 mm
- Motor
- K820
- Mass, wet
- 8.9 kg
- Apogee, sim
- 1,923 m
- Top speed
- 233 m/s
- Stability
- 2.16 cal
- Camera
- DJI O4
Astraeus I and Astraeus II
Astraeus I was the club's first large competition rocket, which I led through design, manufacturing, testing, documentation and launch. It flew at Launch Canada 2025 as one of two high school rockets to reach the pad. An in-flight hardware failure in recovery led directly to the inspection and hardware standards on Astraeus II.
Astraeus II is our Launch Canada 2026 vehicle: 2.2 m, K820 motor, about 1,923 m simulated apogee. It combines a fiberglass airframe, a machined aluminium coupler, a carbon fibre nylon fin can and an onboard camera with live downlink.
Skills
- SolidWorks CAD and FEA (thrust, landing, side and bond loads)
- Fiberglass composite airframes and structural bonding
- CNC machined 6061-T6 aluminium components
- Printed carbon fibre nylon fin cans
- Dual deployment recovery with redundant altimeters and GPS
- Stability analysis: CG/CP, static margin, Mach effects
- Drag analysis and flow visualization
- Fin flutter assessment
- RF planning for video downlink and GPS
- Failure analysis, root cause and corrective action
- Pre-launch checklists, torque verification, witness marks
- Technical documentation for design reviews
Flying: Learning To fly.
Working toward my private pilot licence in a cessna 152.
- Licence
- Private Pilot
- Aircraft
- Cessna 152
- Airport
- Boundary Bay, CZBB
- Logbook
- Under 10 hours
Private Pilot Licence, in training
Working toward a Transport Canada Private Pilot Licence with dual instruction in a Cessna 152 at Boundary Bay (CZBB). Planes have been a lifelong interest, and flying gives me the pilot-side view of the physics I model on the ground.
Currently under 10 hours; next milestones are first solo, the written exam and the flight test.
Skills
- Pre-flight inspection and checklist discipline
- Aircraft handling fundamentals (in training)
- Flying in controlled airspace at a towered airport
- Aviation theory toward the PPL written exam (in progress)
FINGIES: Four arms, One build.
A lego assembly robot, shown at open sauce 2026.
- Arms
- 4, identical
- Shown at
- Open Sauce 2026
- Vision
- Overhead camera
- Demo
- Race the robot
Four-armed Intelligent Neural Gripper for Interlocking Engineered Structures
A fully automatic Lego assembly robot. Four identical arms scan, pick and place in parallel under a central AI controller, while an overhead vision system checks the build against the blueprint in real time. A full rebuild of an earlier manual version, built with a team drawn from the rocketry club and demonstrated at Open Sauce 2026.
Skills
- Robotic system architecture
- Coordinating multiple arms working in parallel
- Computer vision for build verification
- AI control and task scheduling
- Mechanical design and printed robot parts
- Iterating from a manual prototype to full automation
- Designing an interactive public demo
Microbotics: Steer from Outside.
A magnetic soft robot, driven by fields we generate.
- Role
- Track Lead
- Track
- C of 6
- Phase 1
- Rotating magnet rig
- Team
- 4 across 3 time zones
Track Lead, field hardware and control software
Track Lead for Track C in a six-track research program building a magnetically actuated soft robot for mechanical thrombectomy. Track C owns the field generation hardware and control software that steer the robot from outside the body, starting with a rotating permanent magnet rig and an electromagnetic coil system as the phase two upgrade.
Deliverables are a hardware specification, a control library and a tracking module, coordinated with the simulation, biology and navigation tracks.
Skills
- Leading a four-person research track
- Magnetic actuation and field generation
- Embedded systems and electromagnetics
- Hardware specifications and bills of materials
- Control library and API design
- Tracking and localization in a workspace
- Interfacing with other research tracks
- Remote coordination across three time zones
- Reading and applying research literature
3D Printing: Print the Hardware.
Engineering nylons, read datasheets, trust test prints.
- Printer
- Bambu Lab X1C
- Firmware
- Rooted
- Materials
- PA6-CF, PA6-GF
- Drying
- 100 C for 8 to 10 h
Flight parts from a rooted printer
I run a rooted Bambu Lab X1C with AMS, mainly from OrcaSlicer, and use it for functional and flight parts in engineering materials such as carbon and glass fibre nylon.
Skills
- Engineering filaments: PA6-CF and PA6-GF
- Material drying and moisture control
- Slicer tuning in OrcaSlicer (Arachne, minimum feature size)
- Multi-material flush volume calibration
- Custom start G-code and firmware (rooted X1C)
- Reading technical data sheets: tensile, HDT, Z-strength
- Bed adhesion for low-temperature nylon
- Design for FDM and print orientation
Computing: Run it Myself.
A homelab, local ai and vision models on small hardware.
- Workstation
- RTX 4080
- Server
- Ubuntu + Docker
- Local llm
- qwen3 14B
- Edge
- Jetson Nano
Homelab, local AI and edge vision
I run my own infrastructure: a self-hosted Ubuntu server, a GPU workstation for local AI, and edge vision on embedded hardware.
Skills
- Linux administration (Ubuntu Server, Arch Linux)
- Docker, Portainer and self-hosted services
- Private networking with Tailscale
- GPU passthrough and virtualization (VFIO, QEMU, libvirt)
- Local LLMs with Ollama and Open WebUI
- Python automation with the Claude API
- YOLO object detection
- ONNX export and TensorRT deployment on Jetson Nano
- Hardware troubleshooting and recovery
Photography: Chase the Light.
Medium format, late nights, and cars under city lights.
- Body
- Hasselblad H4D-40
- Body
- Fujifilm GFX 50S
- Sensor
- 33 x 44 mm
- Events
- CAHSMUN 2025, 2026
Two bodies, one sensor size
I shoot medium format on a Hasselblad H4D-40 and a Fujifilm GFX 50S, with a focus on automotive and night photography around West Vancouver, and event photography for CAHSMUN Horizons in 2025 and 2026.
Skills
- Medium format photography (Hasselblad H4D-40, Fujifilm GFX 50S)
- Studio and strobe lighting
- Available light and night photography
- Automotive photography
- Location scouting
- Event photography
- Editing in Lightroom
- Export and colour management for web and social
Video: Roll Camera.
Conferences, games, fundraisers and a rocket or two.
- Conference
- VMUN 2025, 2026
- Charity
- Lions Gate Hospital Foundation
- Sports
- Hollyburn Huskies, North Van FC
- School
- Collingwood events
Volunteer video since 2024
Volunteer videographer since 2024: Vancouver Model United Nations (2025 and 2026), the Lions Gate Hospital Foundation, Hollyburn Huskies and North Vancouver Football Club, and events and programs at Collingwood School. I also produce rocketry video, including onboard flight footage.
Skills
- Event and conference coverage
- Live sports filming
- Video editing and storytelling
- Onboard and action camera footage
- Working with organizations to a brief
MaoMoments: Tell their Story.
Free photo and video for organizations that can't afford it.
- Founded
- 2024
- Organizations
- About 7
- Cost to them
- Free
- @mao_moments
A media service I started in 2024
Founder of MaoMoments (2024), a one-person service that provides free photography and video to charities, nonprofits and school organizations that cannot afford professional media. About seven organizations served so far; the Lions Gate Hospital Foundation reported more donations and volunteers after the coverage.
Skills
- Founding and running a service organization
- Client communication and scoping
- Delivering media for outreach and fundraising
- Managing multiple projects alongside school