MIME

Jill Lewis’ experience on the Global Formula Racing team led her to SpaceX

Jill Lewis (’11 B.S., Mechanical Engineering) didn’t set out to work at SpaceX, or even work in aerospace, but her experiences at Oregon State led her there.

Like many engineers, Lewis had an early interest in technology. As a child, she got her parents to take her to garage sales, where she found items like tripods and radios to play with. So, science and engineering were on her mind when she was planning for college.

In 2018, Ellie Parker landed an internship at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California. A rising junior at the time, she worked in the aeromechanics branch, helping to test Ingenuity, the Mars helicopter, in the world’s largest wind tunnel.

“It was one of the coolest jobs you could have,” Parker said. “It was one of the very few times where I really sat there and thought maybe I should consider going into engineering rather than the military.”

OREGON STATE’S ‘ENGINEERING TRIANGLE’

In 2008, 180 acres of Oregon State University’s Corvallis campus was designated a National Historic District. At the time, it included 83 structures, 59 of which are historically significant. One wedge-shaped area in the district’s northeast corner encompasses buildings predominantly related to engineering, physics, and chemistry. Landscape architect Albert Davis Taylor, who updated the campus master plan in 1926 and 1945, dubbed this area the Engineering Triangle.

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.

CATALYST Scholars Program

The Catalyst Scholars Program was launched in 2020 by the College of Engineering at Oregon State University in partnership with the OSU Foundation and donors who are passionate about student success. The program aims to bridge the gap between traditional funding sources — loans, grants, scholarships, personal income — and the cost of attendance for students who are the first generation of their family to attend college, who demonstrate high achievement, and who have unmet financial need.

Prototype lab drives trucking industry toward greater safety 

When Daimler Trucks North America wanted to get a handle on a dangerous and expensive problem in the trucking business — drivers slipping and falling while exiting or entering their cab — the company reached out to Oregon State University engineering students, who gave the entire industry something to hold onto. 

Small, efficient radiation detector could find its way into mammogram machines 

In 2015, a team of Oregon State University researchers devised a new solid-state, scintillator-type radiation detector that offers several key advantages over existing designs: It’s more compact, less expensive to produce, and, critically, does not require lots of high-voltage current to operate.  

When Kristen Travers went to see the 2017 film “Hidden Figures” her senior year of high school, she inadvertently found her career path.

“I was just so blown away and inspired by Katherine Johnson, Mary Jackson, and Dorothy Vaughn,” she said. “The math that Katherine Johnson was doing in the movie was the same math that I was learning in my calculus class at that time. I thought, ‘This is so cool. I have to study engineering.’”

When you think of robots, chances are you picture them in an industrial setting, such as an automotive assembly plant. But one field where robots are poised to make a big impact over the next couple of decades is literally out on the field — in farms and orchards, harvesting food crops.

Mechanization in agriculture began in earnest with the advent of the tractor, which had become standard farm equipment by the 1930s. Today, only about 2% of the U.S. workforce works on farms, compared to about one-third around the time of World War II.

By Meriden Vitale

For Kyle McGann, figuring out the details of a project is fun. During one of his deployments to Afghanistan, he built a climbing wall in his room.

“I found the two best pieces of plywood then scrounged some two by fours,” McGann said. “My brackets were other pieces of plywood that I just cut out to put everything together.”