For much of her childhood, Bryony DuPont thought she would grow up to be a performer. She acted in her first musical at age 5. By 13, she was taking professional voice lessons and singing in multiple choirs.

However, in high school, she developed another passion.

“I was always good at math, and I was really drawn toward engineering, especially aerospace,” DuPont said.

Engineering won out, at least professionally. DuPont earned her doctorate from Carnegie Mellon in 2013 and joined the faculty of the Oregon State University College of Engineering.

“He might have survived, or he might have succumbed to exhaustion, dehydration, or hypothermia,” said Todd Shechter (’99 B.S., Management Information Systems), a member of the all-volunteer Corvallis Mountain Rescue Unit (CMRU).

Not every CMRU mission has a happy ending, and at the start of each one — a dozen or more a year — that nagging question hangs in the air: Is this going to be a rescue or a body recovery?