At NC State’s open house, Cole Malinchock saw makerspaces, labs and rockets, which proved the university’s think and do ethos. The incredible network and competitive engineering program were also selling points. Cole was also awarded the Park Scholarship.

In May, he will graduate with a degree in mechanical engineering with minors in computer programming and environmental science.

Finding his calling

Coming to campus, Cole was quick to see what NC State had to offer. He attended several interest meetings for clubs like Formula SAE and AquaPack. But the research groups on campus are what really caught his attention. 

He first joined Gregory Buckner, Ph.D.’s, electromechanical research lab, where he did entry-level tasks, including painting silicone onto 3D-printed molds for a cardiovascular research project. Shortly after, he joined a computer science research group under Man-Ki Yoon, Ph.D., working on an autonomous driving project. In this role, he worked with CAD modeling to build small-scale RC cars for an upcoming course. 

“Although I wasn’t doing the most exciting work in the labs, it was exciting to be involved with research and building relationships with my peers in the labs,” said Cole. He remained a part of these labs throughout his undergraduate career. “Through my years of contributions, I developed skills and relationships that allowed me to take on more responsibilities from projects in drones, computer vision, localization and even publishing papers.”

Outside of the labs, Cole found an incredible community in the NC State Cycling Club, where he trained with the team and competed against other ACC schools in road cycling races. 

Leading innovation in the lab

Through years of working in the labs, Cole built trust and relationships with the professors and lab managers. These relationships provided him with substantial leadership opportunities for incoming projects.

In the mechanical engineering lab where he started painting silicone on 3D prints, he was later tasked with developing software for a medical robot to replace a treatment for children with scoliosis known as halo gravity traction. Though he started with little biomedical experience, Cole stuck with it and became the project lead for mechanical, electrical and software systems. He also coordinated with physicians at UNC Children’s Hospital to prepare for clinical trials. Now the design is patent-pending. The lab also won first place in the Medtronic Design Competition and will publish its work at the IEEE EMBS 2026 conference. 

As a sophomore, Cole was given the opportunity to write a paper along with a few other undergraduate students in Yoon’s lab. Taking the lead, Cole and his team wrote a paper on using computer vision and a neural network to estimate a robot’s global position, aiming to replace GPS. With a lot of dedication and teamwork, the paper was published in the IEEE Intelligent Vehicle Symposium. Through this, Cole was able to present the paper in Romania. 

In addition to writing a paper on research from Yoon’s lab, Cole was entrusted with leading a team of undergraduate students from engineering and business disciplines to develop a working prototype of an open-source framework for a small vehicle that can autonomously drive around campus to collect data. The team has plans to implement the system with the City of Raleigh for surveying in the coming year. 

An engineer’s entrepreneurial dream

The Albright Entrepreneurship Garage makerspace was the first thing to draw Cole into the Innovation and Entrepreneurship (IE) ecosystem. “It’s an engineer’s dream. I found it during my freshman year and would spend days working around the space, often seeing the student entrepreneurs that would come into the space,” he said. 

Cole got more involved when he found the Engineering Entrepreneurs Program (EEP) for a senior design option. The creative freedom that the program promoted was a major selling factor. “It’s been an incredible experience working with other engineering disciplines to design, implement and sell a product we are passionate about,” he said. 

His EEP team developed Sylva Systems, which provides an autonomous drone service that inspects tree farms, using machine learning to detect tree health issues and pinpoint their precise locations — eliminating hours of manual inspections. Sylva Systems was selected to represent NC State at the ACC InVenture Prize competition. 

As he reflected on his time with IE, Cole said, “I wish I had been involved with IE sooner because it has been an incredible experience for me. Although I still have a lot to learn about startups, IE has been paramount in my development into the crazy and thrilling journey that comes with being an entrepreneur.”

An eye-opening trip to Silicon Valley

During spring break in his senior year, Cole joined IE for the annual trip to Silicon Valley. “I was still relatively unfamiliar with the startup experience, but being on the trip with so many passionate student entrepreneurs and meeting alumni in Silicon Valley was invaluable,” said Cole. 

While talking to students during the trip, he was shocked to see the wide range of academic backgrounds — from business to engineering and even the humanities — among those who were passionate and insightful about entrepreneurship. Cole also highlighted the alumni meetings where he had the chance to ask in-depth questions to better understand the thrilling lifestyle of an entrepreneur. 

“Whether it was a well-established company like AMD or a quickly accelerating company like Waymo, I got to witness the inner workings of these companies and the excitement that they executed in the form of seed funding or unlocking a whole new market.”

A future in innovation

In the fall, Cole will start his Ph.D. in the Department of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering at the University of Michigan under Alan Papalia, Ph.D., where he will work on marine robotics. His research ambitions are to find applications where autonomy can be used to improve understanding of complex marine environments, such as melting icebergs and decaying coral reefs. 

Beyond his Ph.D., Cole is still deciding whether to pursue an academic or startup path. “The entrepreneurial mindset that IE helped me foster has given me the tools to think outside the box and be creative, whether it is the large-scale issues facing the world or just a small roadblock in the lab. My experience with IE and research has helped me see the commonalities in how they both reinforce the need for creativity and innovation, pushing the boundaries of technology, whether it is in the lab or Silicon Valley.”

Advice to his younger self

Reflecting on his time at NC State, Cole offered advice to his younger self. “Don’t be afraid to form connections with people you meet,” he said while talking about feeling like a little fish in a massive pond at such a large university. “When you connect with other students, staff and faculty, that pond can shrink. 

Cole thought back to when he made his first group of friends. They recommended him to the professors he worked under in the labs, setting off a chain reaction in his life trajectory. 

Occasionally, Cole still finds himself struggling to step outside his comfort zone at conferences, “another case of feeling like a very small (Ph.D.-less) fish in a very big pond,” he said. “And yet, the reason I was accepted into my Ph.D. is that I met Papalia at a conference. It sparked a lot of conversations and built a relationship to the point where I will now be working under him. And it all started by pushing myself to ask him about his poster.”