Aerospace Engineering Overview

Matthew W. Doan

Design Engineer
H.O. Mohr Research &
Engineering
Houston, TX

	BS, Aerospace Engineering, Texas A&M University
	Design engineer and project manager, focusing on offshore field development, pressure vessel systems and stress analysis, and wellhead systems.
	Matt was given major project responsibilities right from the beginning -- writing proposals, working with clients, and implementing projects. He feels that this has been a tremendous growth experience for a young engineer.
	"I think co-op and getting some summer work experience is really important."

Doan: "It's very loose here. You have the opportunity to make or break yourself, basically. You take on as much responsibility as you can handle, and you are project manager almost immediately on your projects, where in a lot of companies you don't get that opportunity immediately. So you have to be very hands-on, very personable, and you have to have some business sense as well, because you can't go too far over on your budgets. And we write proposals -- I was writing proposals from day one here."

Q: Matt, what is the highest level you achieved in school? Just your baccalaureate?
Doan: Yes. I got my baccalaureate degree. I began my Master's degree, but I decided that going in the industry would be better for me.

Q: Did you like college?
Doan: I enjoyed it. It was a lot of fun.

Q: Do you feel it helped prepare you for this job?
Doan: Oh, absolutely. What it gave me was the background and the theory. I'm a very hands-on person, and all throughout my childhood I was always accused of taking everything apart. Now, I know why things work, and that's what I think makes engineering perfect for me.

Q: Was this your first job out of school here?
Doan: No. I worked for another engineering firm for almost a year. It was very small. It had about four engineers. And I wanted to come to a larger environment. So, I knew of H.M. Moore through Texas A&M.

Q: Do you pretty much do the same things?
Doan: Yeah, most of it's sub-sea engineering, predominantly design and analysis.

Q: When you were in school, Matt, did you co-op? Did you have any engineering experience before you graduated?
Doan: Yes and no. I worked for DuPont for a while. That was more of a civil engineering type position. I actually helped design road bases. My degree is in aerospace engineering. So I was doing civil engineering work and getting a degree in aerospace engineering. But, it gave me a feel for what the industry was like.

Q: And, now your have your degree in mechanical?
Doan: No, I have my degree in aerospace engineering. And most of my electives that I took were mechanical engineer electives.

Q: So how did that come about? Just explain how you got into mechanical engineering.
Doan: Well, aerospace engineering and mechanical engineer are very similar. Aerospace, you focus more on fluids and structures, and my emphasis in school was structural analysis. And, obviously, in mechanical engineering, that all meshes together well. So, in the aerospace industry, as I got to the point where I wanted to graduate, or where I was getting to where I was going to graduate, I found that the aerospace industry wasn't what I wanted, and I wanted a more hands-on industry. I'm a very hands-on person, so coming into the oil industry/sub-sea industry was very natural for me, and especially coming into an environment like H.M. Moore, it's very hands-on. We get to design in the office, and go out and test what we design in the lab and put it together. So it's very much a "turn key" type engineering position.

Q: Do you have a PE license?
Doan: I will. I have another year-and-a-half. I have an EIT. In another year-and-a-half I'll have my professional engineering license.