Louis Chin

Louis Chin ’20 came to a fork in the road as high school graduation neared: Keep left and get a college degree, or veer right and enlist in the military.

The Medford, Massachusetts, resident ultimately kept left and enrolled at UMass Lowell as an honors mechanical engineering major. There, he found his academic pursuits could intertwine with his desire to serve his country.

“UMass Lowell sets students up for success,” says Chin, who credits the university’s strong partnerships in the defense industry with helping him launch a career in the United States Department of the Air Force.

Chin serves as a system engineer at Hanscom Air Force Base in Bedford, Massachusetts, which has been a partner of UMass Lowell for more than a decade. 

In January 2025, Chin acted as the master of ceremonies for an event that celebrated UMass Lowell Applied Research Corporation and Hanscom entering into a Partnership Intermediary Agreement, which seeks to speed the creation and transfer of technology. The agreement is the 16th of its kind in the U.S. Air Force and the first in New England.

“This agreement represents our combined efforts and vision for a collaborative future,” Chin said at the event. “It leverages the combined strengths of academic institutions, military programs and state-level initiatives to fortify the United States' competitive edge in technology and innovation.”

Chin was introduced to Hanscom at the beginning of his senior year by his roommate, who interned at the base. Aware of Chin’s interest in the military, his roommate encouraged him to apply to the Air Force Civilian Service PALACE Acquire (PAQ) program, which is designed to develop the next generation of Air Force civilian leaders. Soon after, Chin met a PAQ coordinator at a UMass Lowell career fair and handed off his résumé. He was accepted to the PAQ program at Hanscom, which began after graduation. The program led to Chin’s full-time employment at Hanscom.

Chin believes he had a “leg up” in the PAQ application process because of his former co-op experience with longtime UMass Lowell collaborator RTX Corporation, formerly Raytheon Technologies. He was employed as an engineering intern at the aerospace and defense company during the summers before his junior and senior years. Through UML’s Professional Co-op Program, Chin developed career skills such as interviewing and résumé building, which helped him land the co-op at RTX.

“The co-op experience and the training I received beforehand helped me to stand out,” says Chin, who was offered a full-time position at RTX but instead chose to work at Hanscom.

Chin attended UMass Lowell for its affordability, and he soon discovered that “the coursework is unrivaled” and the opportunities are immense. Along with the co-op experience, he served as a research assistant for the Baseball Research Center, a mechanical engineering tutor, a Campus Recreation Center fitness attendee and a call center representative for the Office of Undergraduate Admissions. Chin also minored in physics and mathematics and graduated summa cum laude. He later obtained a master’s degree in systems engineering at Boston University.

In addition to working at Hanscom, Chin enlisted in the U.S. Air Force Reserves in June 2024. After undergoing Officer Training School, Chin will be appointed as a second lieutenant and will spend one month every year at Joint Base San Antonio in Texas, working with the 90th Cyberspace Operations Squadron.

“I wanted to do something meaningful and find a career that I could look back on and say, ‘I made a difference in my community,’” he says. “That’s why I decided to go to Hanscom and even go as far as putting on the uniform as a part of the U.S. Air Force Reserves.”