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When Andrew Garber ’90, M.S. ’96 studied aerospace engineering at the University of Maryland (UMD), his mentors gave him support and encouragement—and threw him the occasional, good-humored curveball.
“I had just finished my thesis defense and was waiting in the hallway,” Garber recalls. “Then Professor Dave Akin came out. He told me that everything had gone well and that I’d nailed my defense, but that he just had one question: what was the significance of today’s date in NASA history?”
Garber, caught off guard for a moment, hesitated. But then he realized he knew it.
The date, February 20, was the anniversary of John Glenn’s historic space flight around the Earth.
Garber, in fact, was well-versed in NASA lore. Before returning to UMD to complete his master’s degree, he’d worked at a NASA flight dynamics facility, where he monitored command and control of scientific satellites. Akin provided some of the impetus for Garber’s decision to pursue a master’s. A recent UMD hire at the time, he had established a Space Systems Lab at the aerospace engineering department—and set up one of the only neutral buoyancy tanks to be housed on a college campus.
The new resources at UMD were a draw for the young Garber. Although aircraft engines and propulsion had been his main focus as an undergraduate, he found himself gravitating towards space engineering, in part because of his time at NASA.
At UMD, Garber studied not only with Akin, but with another recent hire—future UMD President Darryll J. Pines. Trivia challenges aside, he says, both provided the kind of thorough, caring, and conscientious feedback that is critical to a graduate student’s success.
Garber went on to build a professional career that’s been both rewarding and varied. He landed a role as a lead attitude control systems hardware engineer at Orbital Sciences, assisting with multiple satellite launches. Later, the Department of Defense tapped his skills; among other projects, Garber helped engineer military satellites that assist frontline warfighters with communications, navigation, and situational awareness.
He also developed an entire system-level test program to verify and validate ground-based command and control software for the overhead persistent infrared (OPIR) sensor package. The OPIR sensor, as integrated on numerous overhead assets, is a technology that provides battlefield commanders with intelligence on specific enemy threats.
And if all those pursuits weren’t enough, Garber also manufactured flight hardware and components, working all the way down to chip level. He was, in addition, the lead test engineer on a project to develop next-generation onboard data storage units (DSUs) for use on DoD spacecraft. Variants of the unit he helped to develop are still in use today.
He credits UMD aerospace engineering with making such a career possible, and for that reason he’s decided to gift his estate to the department—both as an expression of gratitude, and as a way to support future engineers. “It’s the right thing to do,” he said.
“The professors I studied with were not only distinguished in their academic fields, but often maintained contact with industry and were on top of emerging trends,” Garber said. “Their expertise enabled them to answer just about any question an aspiring young engineer could throw at them.”
“They piqued my interest to seek, to know, and to understand whatever the latest and greatest thing might be. They inspired me to always keep pushing forward in terms of acquiring new knowledge and skills,” he said.
This story first appeared in AeroContact magazine.
December 15, 2025
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