Sam Foxman

Hi! My name is Sam, and I'm finishing my last year of undergrad at Caltech in computer science.

At Caltech, I work with the Gharib aerospace group on fluid mechanics, and I work at JPL on laser communications. I also work on computational chemistry with the Nelson group.

View CV

Project Highlights

NASA Laser Communication Software

I create software for NASA's space lasers. In 2023, my software decoded this transmission from deep space back to Earth which contained a cat video, demonstrating a novel method of high-bitrate deep space communication. I also invented GPU-based laser communications receivers, which outperform previous FPGA-based systems by 1.5x.¹

The Taters cat video sent by NASA which my software received. Source: CNN
GPU-accelerated image processing for aerospace

I created software that uses GPUs to analyze how air and water move by tracking particles in high-speed video. This technique helps engineers design airplanes, cars, and understand fluid mechanics phenomenon. My algorithms can process the data in real-time, while previous methods took days to analyze minutes of footage.

Screenshot of the RapidPIV GPU-accelerated PIV software.
NASA-GPT: Chatbot for NASA

I created NASA's retrieval-augmented generation chatbot, NASA-GPT. NASA-GPT includes millions of documents of public and internal NASA data, hosted at the NASA supercomputing center.

Screenshot from NASA-GPT SC '24 presentation.

Selected Publications

S. Foxman, R. Rogalin. "GPU Receivers for Deep Space Optical Communications". Presenting at SPIE Photonics West, Free-Space Laser Communications XXXVIII, January 2026.
S. Bollt, S. Foxman, M. Gharib. "RapidPIV: Full Flow-Field kHz PIV for Real-Time Display and Control". Submitted to Measurement Science & Technology, 2025. Preprint https://www.arxiv.org/abs/2504.17987.
L. Coffin, A.J. Torres, S. Wallen, P. Calub, K. Gauld, I. Kwaterski, S. Foxman, H. Ramsperger, E. Xu, ..., K. Carpenter, S.J. Chung. "PILLARS: Plume-Deployed Inflatable for Launch and Landing Abrasive Regolith Shielding". AIAA Aviation Forum and Ascend, July 2025. https://doi.org/10.2514/6.2025-4126
B. Ehlmann, ..., S. Foxman, ..., and the Lunar Trailblazer Team. "Lunar Trailblazer Spacecraft Tracking and Mission Recovery Attempt: Characterization of Status and Behavior of a Non-Cooperative Object in Cis-Lunar Space". Manuscript submitted, August 2025.
D. Eremin, K. Jha, D. Delgadillo, H. Zhang, S. Foxman, S. Johnson, N. Vlahakis, D. Cascio, V. Lavallo, J. Rodriguez, H. Nelson. "Spatially-Aware Diffraction Mapping Enables Fully Autonomous MicroED". In review at Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS), 2025.
B. Ehlmann, ..., S. Foxman, ..., and the Lunar Trailblazer Team. "The Lunar Trailblazer Mission: Science Motivation and Implementation of a Pioneering Small Satellite for Lunar Water and Lunar Geology in the NASA SIMPLEx program". Submitted to Journal of Geophysical Research, August 2025.

Patents and Inventions

S. Bollt, S. Foxman, M. Gharib. "Portable Real-Time Optical Flow-Field Sensor". U.S. Patent Application No. 63/715,303, November 2024.
S. Foxman, R. Rogalin. "GPU-Based Optical Communications Modem". Software available under license from Caltech/NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, June 2025.
S. Foxman, S. Bollt, M. Gharib. "Systems and Methods for Optical Flow Using GPU Tensor Processing Cores". U.S. Patent Application No. 63/823,578, June 2025.

Footnotes

GPU receiver achieved 75 Mbps from a 4 Watt transmitter at a distance of 2.25 * 10^8 km, versus 50 Mbps for FPGA system. See upcoming paper at SPIE Photonics West for details.