NASA, MIT and Entrepreneur First. Meet Theo.

"After 2 years at EPFL, I still couldn't replace a light bulb", Theo jokes. That changed when he joined Xplore and ARIS, opening doors to NASA & MIT. And now he is building his start-up in the US.

Theo Schafer

Studies: Thesis @ MIT ‘23, Robotics @ ETHZ ‘23, Micro-Engineering @ EPFL ‘21
Experiences: NASA JPL, Entrepreneur First
Student Orgs: EPFL Xplore, ETHZ ARIS
Origin: France
Links: LinkedIn

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Growing up

Where did you grow up and what was it like?

I grew up in the countryside of France, near Metz which is a 120,000 inhabitant city not far from Germany. It was a very small town of about 10,000 people where I lived until I was 18.

What made you join EPFL for the Micro-Engineering bachelor’s?

In France, I did one year of preparatory classes destined to entering engineering schools. But I didn’t like the rigid structure and lack of autonomy in that system. I heard about EPFL through a friend from high school, looked it up and thought “wow, that’s the place I need to be”. So after finishing my first year in Strasbourg, I made the best decision ever and moved to EPFL.

Evolving study habits and priorities at EPFL

How did your approach to studying and classes evolve over your bachelor’s?

My first semester, I was working my ass off - studying all day, doing nothing else. I would redo all the problem sets every week, so by week 4 I was redoing problem sets from weeks 1-4. I was just killing myself with work, but it wasn’t even efficient. What’s important is not just knowing how to do it, but knowing how to do it fast. You need to intensely review right before the exam anyway to have it fresh.

So by my second and third semester, I was going less and less to classes. I’d rather just read the material, try the problem sets, and eventually I was barely doing the problem sets and just reading the solutions to understand them. That cut my work by like 80% while achieving the same grades.

Grades and studying for classes were not that helpful for later stages like getting internships or a master’s thesis. No one asked about my grades, it didn’t matter if you had a 4.7 or 5.7 GPA. You want to be as efficient as possible with classes, get a decent but not perfect GPA, and really focus on networking, student projects, and learning skills. That’s what matters.

When did you realize grades don’t matter as much and start thinking about internships?

I really started thinking about it in my second year, BA4. That’s when I got bored of theoretical classes. I had been in engineering school for 2 years but couldn’t change a light bulb, I felt like I wasn’t a real engineer. So I wanted to do hands-on projects to actually learn skills.

I joined EPFL Xplore, which was in its first year. I wanted to do something exciting like space-related. I considered the spacecraft and rocket teams but wasn’t sure I’d get in with no experience. Xplore was brand new and offering leadership positions, so even though it wasn’t my first choice, I joined as a team lead to learn even more.

Moving to ETHZ, joining ARIS and NASA

You then switched from EPFL to ETHZ, why did you do that?

I really liked EPFL. I had a great life on the campus and everything. And looking back, I actually enjoyed my life more at EPFL because the city, the campus, I just liked it better. I also had a girlfriend in Lausanne, but Zurich and Lausanne are not so far away.

But yeah, I think it was just based on the ranking, I was like, ‘I am in the top 15 university. I can move to a top 5 university. Why would I not?’ And I'm glad I made the move, because indeed, people knew about ETH way more than EPFL. At NASA, everybody knew about ETH. Few people knew about EPFL. In the robotics department, ETH is very famous.

You also double your network. The more universities you go to, the more people went to the same university. If you meet someone from EPFL, you can say, ‘oh, I went to EPFL’. If you meet someone from ETH, you can say, ‘oh, I went there too’.

So when you reach out to people on LinkedIn or you cold message them, you can be like, ‘oh, I saw you went to ETH or MIT, so did I’ - it makes reaching out easier. And cold messaging is a super important skill, it can take you really far.

What made you decide to join the ARIS student association?

After meeting Arno Rogg, a mentor from NASA Ames Research Center through EPFL Xplore, the seed was planted that maybe I could intern at NASA someday. So I joined ARIS with the goal of meeting people with contacts at NASA or ESA who could help me.

ARIS had 300 people and was diversifying into new projects beyond rockets, like a CubeSat, liquid engine, and recovery project. I joined the underwater vehicle for Europa exploration project as the project manager, since it was robotics-focused, which I was interested in.

Landing an internship at NASA JPL

How did you get your internship at NASA Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL)?

As I said, it was a two year effort to work on student projects, build up my skills and resume and meet people who could advise me and recommend me. But eventually, one day I cold emailed about 30 people at NASA. Three replied and one moved faster than the others. Within one week of sending those initial emails, I had secured my internship at JPL. It was kind of crazy how fast it happened.

What was your experience like interning at NASA JPL?

It was amazing and inspiring to be surrounded by such brilliant people. I got to meet engineers and program leaders who had worked on historic missions like Voyager. You could talk to someone with gray hair and they’d casually mention landing the first rover on Mars.

The other interns were great and everyone was so passionate. I really liked the campus vibe and how chill people were, at least in my group. I learned a ton and it further ignited my drive to work on ambitious, impactful projects.

Securing a master’s thesis at MIT

How did you end up doing your master’s thesis at MIT?

It actually came about through EPFL Xplore as well. We did a critical design review of our rover and an MIT professor, who was also a systems engineering professor remotely at EPFL, was an expert reviewer. Because I was team lead, I got to present for 30-45 minutes.

After the review, I decided to connect with him on LinkedIn. Within a minute he accepted. But I was sitting at my desk and was like ‘what's the point of having an MIT professor in my LinkedIn network? There's no point, right?’ So I was like ‘fuck it. I'm going to message him. And maybe it works. And he replies, or maybe it doesn't, but whatever’.

So I sent a message thanking him for attending, expressing my interest in aerospace, and asking if we could discuss how I could improve my resume for that field.

He replied within five minutes saying sure, and to schedule a call with his assistant and I was like ‘wow, crazy!’. Eventually the call got scheduled, and I showed him my resume, which at the time just had my EPFL bachelor’s and Xplore. He said it was a cool resume with great experience, and that he actually had a project that summer doing similar work with sensors and PCBs. He asked if I’d like to be part of it, and of course I said yes.

It ended up being delayed almost two years due to the pandemic and other circumstances, but I stayed in touch persistently. Eventually in early 2023, I went to MIT and did my master’s thesis with him. It took a lot of patience and follow-up, but it worked out amazingly.

Building a start-up in the US with Entrepreneur First

What made you decide to join Entrepreneur First and start a company rather than working at NASA full-time?

It was a mix of reasons. Partly ambition - I want to have the largest impact and I think building my own company is how I achieve that. There were also more trivial reasons that might disappoint you, like wanting to be close to my girlfriend who was supposed to start her master’s in London, and EF had an office there (whereas NASA in the US was out of the question).

A big barrier between me and entrepreneurship was student loans. I couldn’t afford to spend 6-12 months trying to find investors without an income. EF’s program, where they pay you a stipend from the beginning, made it possible.

They reached out to me on LinkedIn and although I ended up in the US anyway, the opportunity got me seriously considering EF and entrepreneurship. I joined and it worked out, so now I’m in California trying to build a company. It’s very exciting and stressful with a lot of uncertainty, but I’m glad I made the leap.

Founding Tetsuone Scientific - Accelerating scientific discoveries

What are you working on now and what are your goals?

I’m now building a startup called Tetsuone Scientific through the Entrepreneur First program. We’re developing an autonomous robot scientist that is able to reiterate on experiments. With it, we want to speed up scientific discoveries that will help solve issues like drug delivery, climate change or plastic pollution.

Our first partner is a small lab working to find treatments for rare genetic diseases, like one affecting only a father and his son. The current process could take them months. Our goal is to help them find a cure within days, which would be incredible.

It’s a longer-term play since we’re building complex hardware and software that will take a year or more to get the platform ready. But I’m committed to seeing it through and making a real impact. I don’t see this as a quick 2-year journey to acquisition, but rather something I want to pour my energy into long-term to maximize the positive impact we can have on human health. This is the kind of ambitious, meaningful work I want to focus on. It aligns perfectly with my drive and ambitions.

Diving deeper into motivation, imposter syndrome and focus

Did you experience imposter syndrome at EPFL and how did student associations help with that?

Yeah, imposter syndrome is a big thing, I’ve had it a lot on and off. If you’re ambitious and always trying to get out of your comfort zone, you’ll have it quite often. I had it a bit at the beginning of EPFL when I didn’t know any technical skills. Joining projects and learning a lot helped with that.

Then I got my NASA internship and I was like ‘damn, what the hell, everyone’s so brilliant around me’. But at the end, my supervisor said I was the best intern he’s ever had and tried to hire me full-time, so that external validation made the imposter syndrome go away again.

Now trying to build a startup, the imposter syndrome is back as I’m meeting investors in Silicon Valley. It always comes and goes, you have to handle it.

What drives you to achieve so many things?

That’s an interesting question. It’s quite dumb, but my mom and dad always told me to do the best I could when I was a kid.

So I'm just trying my best in what I'm doing, and I feel like for the leadership positions, just more because I want to distinguish myself from others. If I want to be among the best, I need to join a student project. Right? Because most students at EPFL just study, they don't do a student project. So I want to join a student project.

But on top of that, there are also other people who join a student project. So how I distinguish myself from them? It would be by doing a leadership position within those things and just trying to just really build my resume so that I'm standing out. Just my mindset is I want to stand out.

I want to go do prestigious things, assume leadership positions so that I'm the only one in the world who has this resume, basically.

I don't know why I want to do that though. Maybe recognition? I don't know. I just like what I'm doing, and it's fun.

Advice for ambitious EPFL students

Looking back, what advice would you give to yourself as a new EPFL bachelor’s student?

Work to get a decent GPA in your classes, but focus more time and energy on student projects you like and where you learn real skills. Spend time with professors and people you can network with who may be able to help you later. Cold messaging and reaching out to people is very important.

Always think about how you can improve yourself and your resume and make it stand out. But even more than the resume, I’m realizing now that social capital and the network you build through these experiences are what matter most, especially if you want to start a company someday.

I kind of regret not building stronger connections with EPFL professors, even ones not teaching my classes. There are so many interesting things going on in their labs. Go have coffee with a professor working on cutting-edge tech in their field and build that relationship. They may not work directly in what you do, but they’re always one degree away from someone who could really help you.

So in summary - work on student projects you like, learn skills, build your resume and relationships, and don’t stress too much about perfect grades. That’s my advice to ambitious students.

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Closing notes

Arnie here - hope you enjoyed this post! I’ll be posting weekly from now on 🎉

As always, another poll, who should I feature next?

Anything else I’m missing? Feel free to comment or message me on LinkedIn!