// NASA BREAKING NEWS — SPAZIO & SCIENZA
NASA University Challenge Ignites Trajectory of Drone Entrepreneur
Five years ago, Gavin Gardner was a Michigan State University engineering student researching next-generation drone technology as part of a NASA grant. Garder expected the research to be demanding – but he was surprised that navigating the financial side of the work presented an even greater challenge.
Although Gardner was used to leading fellow students in a lab setting, he and his team were completely new to things like creating budgets, handling large sums of money, and promoting their work for crowdfunding.
That’s why demonstrating both engineering and entrepreneurship skills are major tentpoles of NASA’s University Student Research Challenge (USRC), an initiative that provides grants to teams of college students interested in helping the agency realize its aeronautical research goals.
“Half the battle is building your product,” Gardner said recently. “The other half is selling the product in a way that everyone else can understand what you’re doing and not talking in nerdy, engineering ways.”
Gardner and his Michigan State USRC alumni teammates are still using those lessons today, as aerospace developers. In 2024, they founded their own company, AG3 Labs, which specializes in drones for military training exercises.
“I don’t think I would discredit our technical expertise in getting us to where we are today, but I know that USRC was a booster that really amplified our trajectory at such a young age,” Gardner said.
NASA USRC manager Steven Holz said Gardner’s experience shows what students can accomplish when they receive both a grant and guidance – enabling a future workforce and contributing to the aviation industry.
“We are proud to see the success of USRC alumni,” Holz said. “We hope that every team that participates in the program sees, like Gavin, how they can grow technically, entrepreneurially, and use the opportunity as a launchpad for their own innovative careers.”
Gardner’s path to running his own company began with a middle school age trip to Space Camp, where he began realizing that he wanted to be an engineer.
The engineering bug also bit his brother, Gryson Gardner, and the two of them would often be found in their Michigan garage tinkering with various machinery, including drones and electronic kits.