SI

// 408 km above you

Samuel
Indyk

I build things from orbit to underground: orbital compute, tunnel boring machines, and the software that runs them. Scroll to descend.

Begin descent ↓ GitHub ↗ LinkedIn ↗ Résumé (PDF)
Studying
University of Austin · B.S. '28
Building
Software @ The Boring Company
Leading
President, Austin Union Society

01 / orbit · publication

Putting AI inference in orbit

arXiv:2604.07760 [cs.DC] · Apr 2026

Reduced-Mass Orbital AI Inference via Integrated Solar, Compute, and Radiator Panels

S. Gaalema, S. Indyk, C. Staley

We proposed the Integrated Solar Compute Radiator (ISCR): a single panel that fuses solar cells, a vapor-chamber radiator, and compute ICs. The radiator doubles as the structure holding up the solar cells, so mass drops sharply. I co-developed the architecture and modeled the orbital thermal balance, power budget, and LLM inference throughput.

~500W/kg specific power, ~5× conventional designs
16 MWsatellite from 16,000 panels
1Starship payload to launch it
Read the paper ↗

02 / orbit · lab

Linear algebra you can play with

These run entirely in your browser, with no servers and nothing to install.

PCA · eigen-decomposition

EigenGalaxy Explorer

PCA on ~5,000 real Galaxy Zoo 2 galaxies. Rebuild any galaxy, even a blurred one, from its top k eigengalaxies, and drag the slider to watch the structure come back.

Source ↗

Richardson–Lucy deconvolution

Image Deblurring

Blur a QR code until it's unreadable, then deconvolve it back. Also includes pixel-art restoration and astronomy-style shift-and-stack.

Source ↗

Hackathon · May 2026

Torchlight: Astronaut Risk Profiles

Individualized risk profiles for the Inspiration4 crew, built from nine NASA OSDR multi-omics datasets, with bootstrap CIs and a Claude Q&A grounded in the data.

Live dashboard ↗

03 / descent · education

Founding class, University of Austin

Sep 2024 – Jun 2028 (expected)

B.S. Liberal Studies, Concentration in STEM

One of UATX's founding class. I take circuits and differential equations alongside The Rise and Fall of Ancient Rome, and I think the combination is the point.

  • Analysis of Circuits
  • Differential Equations
  • Software Engineering
  • Ancient Rome
awardFounders Scholarship
awardLonsdale-Magaro Scholarship
leadSoftware & Mechanical Lead, UATXcavators

04 / the austin union society

Truth through debate.

Samuel Indyk · President

The Austin Union is UATX's student-run society for long-form, adversarial debate, built in the tradition of the Oxford Union. The idea is simple: you find out what's true by putting it in a room with someone who thinks it's wrong. That's a lot harder to do in a podcast clip or a comment section.

It's one of the things I'm proudest of. Beyond leading it, I've helped design the format that makes it work week to week:

  1. I.
    The weekly sitting. The gavel opens the meeting, then a short challenge debate, a skills workshop, and a team debate on a motion posted a week in advance.
  2. II.
    Crash courses. Day-long intensives with UATX faculty on rhetoric and style, building substantive arguments, and rebuttal and cross-examination.
  3. III.
    Open forums & guest debates. Public nights on hard questions, plus headline speakers from outside the university.
  4. IV.
    The institution. A charter, elections, member matriculation, and a term debate competition, so the Union outlasts any one class.
“Do We Need Marxism Today?” · Phil Magness v. Clara Mattei Sir Niall Ferguson on AI & the Future of Education Jason Calacanis, Dave Rubin & Joe Lonsdale “Is America a Christian Nation?” “Does Urbanization Promote Human Flourishing?” “Is America Still a Republic?” “Is Political Violence Ever Justified?” Jonathan Pageau: AI & Transhumanism “Do the Gracchi Need to Die for the Republic to Survive?”
guest addressSir Niall FergusonAI and the future of education
debatePhil Magness v. Clara MatteiDo we need Marxism today?
panelCalacanis · Rubin · LonsdaleAustin, May
guest addressJonathan PageauAI and transhumanism
austinunion.org ↗ YouTube ↗ X ↗ Instagram ↗

05 / surface · policy & venture

Touchdown: Washington, D.C.

  1. Jun – Aug 2025

    Policy Intern · White House Office of Science and Technology Policy

    • Contributed to executive order development by gathering data and supporting policymakers.
    • Drafted and coordinated public government communications and resource offerings.
    • Supported the OSTP Director with scheduling, travel, and meetings with federal and non-USG stakeholders; hosted White House visitors, including foreign dignitaries.
  2. Dec 2024 – Jan 2025

    Defense Team Intern · 8VC

    • Analyzed business models and startup ecosystems for investment evaluation.
    • Wrote the quarterly report on the top 50 portfolio companies that went out to LPs.
    • Ran a deep-dive research project reviewed by the general partners, with exposure to government contracting.
  3. Nov 2024 – Feb 2025

    Research Intern · AlphaX

    • Designed robotics curricula for gt.school and Alpha High School based on research into pedagogical best practices.
    • Wrote a 25-page curriculum proposal and sourced cost-effective VR teaching tools.

06 / underground · tunneling

Beneath the surface

Jun 2026 – present · Bastrop, TX

Software Engineering Intern · The Boring Company

  • Built the company's first automated network integration testing (NIT) system for TBM cameras and switches.
  • Built a PowerShell agent and web app that let internal users configure TV displays without manual setup.
  • Supported daily tunnel operations, keeping the gap-sensing device reliable.
  • TypeScript
  • Django
  • TanStack
  • Docker
  • PowerShell

UATX · NABC 2027

Software & Mechanical Lead · UATXcavators

UATX's tunneling team. We're building a DN600 slurry micro-TBM for the Not-a-Boring Competition: parametric CAD in CadQuery, hand calcs, collision audits, and the PLC-driven control station for our vertical tunneling machine.

3D CAD · three.js

microTBM Assembly Viewer

Orbit, section, and explode our cutterhead spindle mount across design revisions, and step through the assembly sequence.

Source ↗

Controls · HMI

Vertical Tunneling Machine Control Station

The control center for our vertical tunneling machine: a Python operator GUI talking to the machine's PLC.

GitHub ↗

07 / deeper · software

More things I've built

Reinforcement learning

Polytopia-Zero

An AlphaZero-style ML platform for the strategy game Polytopia. I built a simulated game engine and developer API, and I'm training a neural network through self-play with MCTS to learn joint policy and value functions.

  • MCTS
  • Self-play
  • Game engine
playable demo coming soon

Market design

ARES

Auction-based Registration and Enrollment System. It plugs into the university's Populi API and replaces first-come-first-served class registration with a token-based bidding market.

  • Ruby on Rails
  • Populi API
  • Docker
github ↗

Full-stack app

UATX Marketplace & Chat

A student marketplace that matches textbook listings to classmates by shared courses, with chat, Stripe Connect checkout, image uploads, 160+ backend tests, and CI-gated deploys.

  • FastAPI
  • React
  • TypeScript
  • Postgres
github ↗

programming & data

Python · TypeScript · R · Django · TanStack · Docker · Structured Text

engineering tools

Inventor / Fusion 360 · Onshape · ANSYS · Phoenix Contact PLC · VFD software

hands-on

Fabrication · sensor integration · control systems · web dev · oscilloscope / RF

// you've reached the bottom of the shaft

Let's build something.

Whether it's orbital, underground, or somewhere in between, I'd love to hear about it.

emailsamuel.m.indyk@gmail.com linkedinin/samuel-indyk ↗ githubSam-Indyk ↗ résuméDownload PDF ↓

↑ return to orbit

Full page ↗