Aerospace Engineering Overview

Susan M.
Bowley
Aerospace
Technologist
NASA Ames Research
Center
Moffett Field, CA

	Ph.D. Candidate, University of Virginia MS, Mechanical Engineering, Stanford University BS, Mechanical Engineering, University of Connecticut
	Aerospace Technologist focusing on biomedical research in the Musculoskeletal Biomechanics Lab; analysis of heat, human factors, and load for space shuttle.
	Sue began her NASA career ten years before this interview as a facility engineer for wind tunnels. For several years she developed support equipment for transonic and later hypersonic wind tunnels. She then took advantage of NASA professional development program through which employees can move to different areas of interest which brought her to life sciences to actually build a human powered centrifuge. It's powered by bicycles and they're going to be using it for research. She's been in biomechanics research ever since.
	"What's most valuable really -- in anything -- is persistence and accomplishing your goals."

Bowley: "What I think basically got me the job here was lab experience that I had. When I was an undergrad, I worked in the food mechanics lab. And there was a lot of experimental stuff that I did, all four years during the summertime and part-time during the school year. So I didn't do a coop but I had that lab experience. That's what really what got me the job here."

Q: How did you get started in mechanical engineering first?
Bowley: Well, my dad was a Mechanical Engineering professor at UConn and when I was in high school, I originally wanted to go into physics. But he's the one who sort of convinced me that engineering would be more application-based instead of theoretical-based. I always liked physics because I thought it was really great that you didn't have to, like, go do something. You could figure it out on paper, you know, and then you could check it by doing whatever.

Q: Is that true? Is that the way it's actually worked out?
Bowley: Yeah. I mean, to me, the value is of engineering is that you can experiment forever but you could get to a much quicker answer if you could analyze something first and then experimentally determine something afterwards.

Q: When you were a student, what were you interested in?
Bowley: Actually, when I was in high school, I was considering being a French major because I like foreign languages. But I didn't think it was challenging enough for me. It was very easy and I'd rather do something more challenging. I was interested in nature, and studying nature and science weren't so easy.

Q: How has this job changed with NASA over the time that you've been here?
Bowley: Well, originally I was a facility engineer for a wind tunnel. And I worked there for about three years. That was fun because it was a lot of fieldwork. You could be outside crawling around in the wind tunnel. These things are huge, like submarines. There were always problems and it was exciting to always have a problem to work on, to think on your feet, you know. And most of it wasn't analyzing really huge problems, at your desk or anything. But, from there, I worked in a transonic tunnel for two years. And then I worked in a hypertunnel-blowdown wind tunnel, which has different support systems. It was a different type of facility, so, again, it was the whole "learning-new-stuff-over-again" thing. That's when I did the baby project for my graduate work -- not related to NASA. And then I did a professional-development program that they have here in the center, where you can move to different areas that are interesting to you for career development. And then I came over to Life Sciences to build a human-powered centrifuge. And so for a year I worked and got that thing built. It's powered by bicycles and they're going to be using it for research soon. But then after that, I applied for full-time graduate study, and I went to the University of Virginia for biomedical-engineering Ph.D. course work. Then I came back after that year and I'm trying to finish my research project now. I just recently started working in a biomechanics lab with Rob Whelan and Greg Wright.

Q: If you had to do it over again, would you pick mechanical or would you go for something else?
Bowley: For undergraduate, I would definitely pick mechanical. The thing I liked about mechanical is we had classes in all the other different engineering disciplines. We had electrical engineering, computer science, chemical engineering and related things. It really prepares you well for anything. But I would only do biomedical engineering as an advanced degree because it's so specialized. And I think that you need the pure engineering discipline to be able to go into that in the future. I don't think it would be useful doing that as an undergrad.