May 18, 2015
This spring we are proud to send 78 graduates from the Department of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics out to change the world. Below we share highlights from just a handful of our exceptional graduating students who will soon become the new engineering leaders of tomorrow. We can’t wait to see what they do next.
Katharine Gamble (bottom row, left) has had a very successful career as a graduate student at UT-Austin. Her research on small satellites has led to prestigious fellowships and award-winning projects.
She was a 2013 recipient of the National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship that funded her last two years of research on the risk analysis of CubeSats, and she implemented systems engineering processes in the Texas Spacecraft Lab (TSL) that were not in place prior to her joining the lab. That same year, with Gamble as the student program manager, TSL won first place in the national University Nanosatellite Program competition for their ARMADILLO satellite.
Gamble has also been the recipient of numerous awards, including the Cockrell School’s Women in Engineering Program’s Champion Award and Excellence Award. She is active in the Society of Women Engineers (SWE) and won 3rd place in the SWE WE14 Conference poster competition. She also received the ASE/EM poster award at the 2015 Graduates and Industry Networking (GAIN) event.
Gamble obtained her B.S. in aeronautical/astronautical engineering from Purdue University. At UT, she has completed a M.S. in aerospace engineering and this spring she will receive a Ph.D., also in aerospace engineering.
She hopes to make a difference in the world by working with the policymakers and decision-makers in Washington, D.C. to establish proper courses of action when it comes to STEM research and development, education and outreach.
Ben Ayton (shown left with the Eeifel Tower) was the first University of Texas student to study abroad in Ecole Centrale Paris, where he had the opportunity to design and build a plasma reactor. Ayton has participated in several interdisciplinary research projects, including working at the Institute for Geophysics where he focused on a project to prove that ice penetrating radar could resolve the existence of an ocean under the ice. He has also worked in the Texas Spacecraft Laboratory (TSL) on CubeSats and communications software.
“I had lots of hands-on experience with extra-curricular activities, which gave me a very real sense of the difficulties encountered on large engineering projects,” he said. “I had plenty of time to hone my problem-solving skills, as well as my teamwork skills.”
Ayton is graduating with a B.S. in aerospace engineering and plans to attend graduate school. He has an internship lined up with NASA-JPL, where he hopes to work as a full-time systems engineer after finishing his graduate studies.
Nicholas Shepard (shown right) has been involved with the Longhorn Rocketry Association for four years and has achieved level one and level two high power rocketry certifications. The summer after his sophomore year, Shepard worked in two research labs at the University of Texas at Arlington. During his junior year, he worked under Professor Kenneth Liechti at UT-Austin studying fracture mechanics and crack growth. Shepard also interned at The Boeing Company with the Houston Design Center. Shepard also received the Outstanding Tutor award through the Engineering Study Tables from the Cockrell School.
“My education, specifically the aircraft design course, has shown me what industry will be like and what it is like to hold a leadership position in the engineering world,” he said. “My other classes have given me the basic tools to go out into industry and learn how to do my job well.”
Shepard is graduating with a B.S. in aerospace engineering and is an engineering honors scholar and college scholar. He plans to work toward his M.S. in structural analysis after a few years in the workforce. His long distance plans range from applying to be an astronaut to becoming a senior technical fellow at Boeing.
Cody Colley (above, middle) has worked on six spacecraft missions in the TSL, where he is currently a laboratory manager. He is the project manager for the ARMADILLO spacecraft, and has worked on tasks ranging from leading the team through launch vehicle selection to integrating and testing the spacecraft. Along with this work, Colley has co-designed several 3D printed propulsion systems, which will be flying over the next few years, and built solar panels for the JPL-RACE spacecraft, which was lost on the Orbital Sciences accident in October.
He is the recipient of the William F. McCombs Scholarship, the Richard Douglass and Judith Watson Perkins Endowed Presidential Scholarship and the Jangle and Henry Holman Endowed Presidential Scholarship in Engineering. He was also a finalist in the 2014 JPL Space Mission Design Challenge.
Colley will graduate with a B.S. in aerospace engineering this spring and has accepted a position at NASA-JPL. He hopes to become a systems engineer on a major flight project and to one day submit an application to join the Astronaut Corps.
