Erin Young earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Notre Dame and works as a flight controls engineer at Boom – Supersonic.

[1:10 ] What are careers available for Aerospace Engineering? – 2 paths space or aviation. – Erin went the Aviation route while at first thinking she was going the space route after going to space camp at the age of 13.

[3:15 ] What do you actually focus on during college? – focus on aerodynamics of flight – similar to mechanical engineering, a lot of fluid dynamics.

[4:20 ] Specific systems for supersonic (faster than speed of sound) aircraft vs standard commercial aircraft. The aircraft at supersonic speeds; everything heats up – they have to work to cool everything down. They have to fly through shock waves at a continual basis. When you break through the sound barrier, it is a continuous shock wave.

[7:30 ] Are there enough careers for a very specific STEM degree like Aeropace? – since it is very close to mechanical you can flow back to mechanical but would be very tough to go from mechanical to Aerospace.

[9:10 ] Fired up about the future of supersonic speed – today we still travel at the same speeds we did back in the 1950’s! The concord (first supersonic jet) was very expensive to fly – the Boom solution will be very fuel efficient.

[11:40 ] Ah-ha moment – interesting that up to graduation it is a very clear path, but after that the roadmap is very wide open – the ah-ha moment was when she realized the number of paths she could pursue

[13:10 ] Getting through college: have a good support network – her first calculus test was a 53, and she failed it. The support network was so very important to get through that – she felt like she was not cut out for engineering after that test.

[16:20 ] Best advice – focus on the fundamentals. Habit – always ask questions and use Onenote (or Evernote) to write everything down.

Book Erin recommends Fly Girls by Keith O’Brien.

[17:30 ] parting advice – get hands on experience!

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