When he was in third grade, Dillon Nishigaya took a school field trip to NASA’s Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, that would set the trajectory of his life.

Built in 1939, the center is located in the heart of Silicon Valley and is where NASA conducts some of its most innovative and groundbreaking research. The agency’s fastest supercomputers, the world’s largest motion-based flight simulator and the world’s largest wind tunnel are located there.

“I absolutely fell in love. I wanted to be an astronaut. I wanted anything and everything to do with space,” he says. “As time passed, it became a passion of mine. I got a bunch of books. I would read about Neil Armstrong, and I did all my presentations in science classes having to do with space.”

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Photo by Northeastern University/Alyssa Stone