Photo: Capital Gazette
Darius James Lukas is a science, technology, engineering and math senior at South River High School. With classmates Andrew Loomis and Allison Bowman, Darius founded the drone company Thanics as part of their Capstone project for their Unmanned Aerial Systems class. They had to develop and deliver a quad-copter or drone with enhanced 360-degree camera capabilities that will be safe for most people to use and can live-stream and follows FAA rules and regulations.
The corporate status is set up so they can sell the Thanics Halo drone if it is successful.
The drone features a consumer friendly, quad-copter design. They reason this will make it more appealing to a wider audience. Darius handles the software and electrical design and the drones’ application to aerospace. The drones’ carbon fibers, embedded systems, and algorithms, he feels, are related to knowledge needed to equip rockets or other spacecraft for the flight to Mars.
Their prototype drones are attached to rectangular frames made of high carbon fibers (“like those used in Lamborghinis,” said Darius ) laced with electronics and wiring. The trio is also sharing their research, posting modifications and software resources online for those who will eventually purchase Thanics basic drones. The team is working to gain patents, and come up to speed on trademark, legal and liability issues; finding funding, learning how to market their product, and presenting at conferences.
This is just one of the incubator projects the threesome is considering as they attempt to figure a way to finance their college expenses. They applied for a Theil Fellowship, which could give them a $100,000 grant and two-year fellowship, by doing a business pitch.
Darius has also been busy applying for scholarships and applying to several colleges that offer the programs in which he is most interested.
“His passion for learning is evident every time he walks into the room,” said Matt Schrader, a science and physics instructor at South River. He noted Darius “attacks every day with purpose, a great attitude and a great sense of humor. Darius has achieved a very elusive balance in his life that most high students fail to find and he did it by making extremely rigorous academic coursework relevant and fun by applying it to what he loves, and on top of that, doing it with his friends.”
Last summer, going from outer space to inner spaces, Darius had an internship at the Naval Academy, assisting with a research project led by professor Richard O’Brien. Darius assisted the professor in optimizing a MatLab program that computed statistics on medication and treatment for patients with type 2 diabetes.
He helped calibrate the program to collect and compare data with better speed and accuracy. They created virtual patients and checked the accuracy of the model to predict the values on a large number of patients. The results of the team’s preliminary findings have been accepted as a conference peer-review paper by the IEEE Control Systems conference. The teen received a co-authorship listing on the paper “Personalization of a glucose insulin model for diabetic patients,” by Dr. Richard O’Brien, Eileen Dilks, and Darius J. Lukas.
Like his peers in the STEM program, Darius has been involved with the school’s robotics teams. Freshman year, he worked on software development for the teams, and sophomore year, he captained one of the robotics teams. The past two years, he’s been involved in developing the Thanics drones.
Inducted into the National Society of Professional Engineers, his sophomore year, Darius took first place in the Science Fair Regionals for “Most Appropriate Pitch for a Drone” and “Most Outstanding High School Aerospace Exhibit.”
Darius wants to major in a technical field like aerospace and computer engineering developing software and embedded systems with aerospace applications.
In his spare time, he is a sacristan at St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church in Severna Park. He assists Father Jim Proffitt in the celebration of the mass, manages the setup before services and clean-up after, trains and supervises new altar staff, and manages special events and services. He has also been involved as an assistant director at the church’s annual summer camp, and is a peer leader for middle schoolers.
To relax, he enjoys swimming, scuba diving — and building model rockets.
His mother, Amy Lukas, a trained clinical social worker, is an active church volunteer at St. John’s Church. Darius G. Lucas, his father, is a software engineer for a contracting firm. He has two younger siblings: 13-year old Colin, an eighth-grader at Severna Park Middle School; and Alex, 10, a fifth-grader at Oak Hill Elementary School.
Darius credits South River’s STEM program for inspiring, encouraging and supporting his dreams.
“The best thing in the STEM program are the people: the teachers and the students,” he said. “They all want to be there. They care. And, the students are investing in going above and beyond. The teachers are very supportive.”
Darius gazed at the drone base he and his team developed. He said, “I’m interested in the things I’m interested in today because of the people here.”
Source: Capital Gazette