What does it take to turn curiosity into innovation?
This November, we’re shining the alumni spotlight on Bo Anderson ’18, who recently returned to Tower Hill as the first guest speaker for the newly created Engineering Club. Bo inspired a room full of future engineers to stay curious about how and why things are designed, to value growth over grades, and to let hands-on experience speak louder than a résumé. He reminded students that there’s no magic formula for success; it’s about problem solving, perseverance and allowing curiosity to guide the way.
We caught up with Bo after his club presentation to ask him more about how Tower Hill prepared him for college and career, what he’s learned along the way and where his curiosity and drive are taking him next.
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Editor’s Note: This Q&A has been edited for clarity and conciseness.
Tell us a little about where you are now. Describe your current role, field, or area of interest.
Hello there, Hillers! My name is Bo Anderson and I currently work in Newark, Delaware, as a Radar Digital Signal Processing Engineer at Phase Sensitive Innovations, Inc. (PSI). PSI is a research company working to integrate Radio Frequency (RF) Photonics to create ground-breaking receiver systems; whether it be similar to the machines at airport TSA checkpoints or applied to radar and surveillance, our technologies use optical processing technologies to 'see' the electromagnetic environment. Since PSI is a smaller company, my role as a Radar DSP Engineer varies from week to week: I'm a programmer, a system modeler, a hardware tester and a project manager all-in-one. Radar is a fascinating field and it is all around us everyday with telecommunications, aerospace imaging, and motor vehicle sensing!
On the side, I have been a volunteer assistant coach with the THS varsity boys soccer team, led by the one and only Coach Chris Aitken. It's been an honor to support a program that taught me so many lessons when I was a player, and I have thoroughly enjoyed seeing these young men come together as a family over the course of this season; this group of student-athletes is a special one!
Share about recent accomplishments. If you have a recent accomplishment you are proud of, what does this achievement mean to you, and what inspired or motivated you along the way?
Despite enjoying my work in Radar DSP Engineering, I recently accepted a job at a robotics startup in California: GrayMatter Robotics! I will be working as a Robotics Engineer with their large robotic arm systems, helping to deploy autonomy to customers looking to reduce industrial manual labor for surface material operations. Engineering, as a whole, is a field that requires problem-solving and a grasp for all contributing factors; gaining knowledge in a variety of engineering roles will provide more perspective for how variables map to each other. I am returning to the robotics field after completing a Master of Engineering in Robotics from Duke University in 2023, but I will take many lessons and math/physics approaches in radar with me to my next role. Both radar and robotics technologies involve sensor and signal processing (e.g. visible light camera, infrared cameras, or radio wave detectors), so I look forward to applying knowledge to this growing field.
Thinking back to your time at Tower Hill, how did your experience here help prepare you for your journey?
Tower Hill prepared me to strategically and optimally juggle all that I can in life. As a Hiller, you are a scholar, an athlete, a performer, an artist, a poet, a leader and everything in-between. Exposure to that many realms requires discipline, dedication and a need for balance. I carried all of those skillsets and that mentality into college, graduate school, and now the real world, and I am proud to have developed them in my years at Tower Hill.
What’s one thing you’ve learned along the way that has helped you reach your goals or stay grounded?
Stay curious in all that you do. You will find that motivation comes and goes, but drive is innate. Ask questions, figure out what your interests are and reach out to people to get their advice if you don't have the answers. You have so many resources all around you and within the Tower Hill community, so allow your vulnerabilities to create paths to learning and growing.
What advice would you share with current Tower Hill students, recent graduates, or young alumni just starting out?
As corny as it sounds, a piece of advice I would provide is that everyone's journey is different. You see actors becoming famous in their 40s, CEOs that played college sports and people pivoting to different career paths late in life. In my case, I have already touched many different engineering fields, and I constantly remind myself that I can keep growing individually as long as I have the drive to do so and the curiosity to keep searching for what makes me tick. Maybe I will become a head chef at a Michelin-star restaurant in five years or even decide to go to medical school next year. Our careers are not defined by what we excelled at in high school, by what we majored in college, or what our first few jobs were; we are defined by the journey that shapes us into the people we want to become. So, pursue what brings you joy and never allow others to deter you from that path.
Is there anything else you’d like to add such as a memory, shoutout, or reflection, that captures what being part of the Tower Hill community means to you?
Continuing with my words about the THS soccer team and Coach Chris Aitken, it has been so nice to also work alongside Charles Sharon, Kitchel Chilton and Maurice Rapp this year. Each of them has been fortunate enough to see our players grow up from as early as the Tower Tot days, and it shows with the heart and soul they put into educating and developing these young men. And, ironically for me, back in 2016 I had a third grader write me a letter wishing me good luck in the state championship soccer game–that third grader is now a senior captain for our team: Trey Truesdell ’26. I still have that letter to this day and it reminds me of the impact that each alum and current student has on our strong Hiller community.
