We're celebrating Women's History Month by highlighting female scientists! Each Wednesday of the month on the blog, we'll feature a new female scientist that is changing our world as we know it (also featured on our Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter every Thursday of the month). Our third highlighted female scientist is Tiera Fletcher; learn about her work and accomplishments below!
Tiera Fletcher is an American engineer who graduated from MIT in 2017 and works for Boeing. She is one of the designers and structural analysts building the Space Launch System for NASA which is set to send people to Mars.
Her parents encouraged her at a young age to calculate things and measure things in her daily life. These exercises challenged Fletcher and set her apart from other kids her age, and at eleven years old, she zeroed in on her interest in Aerospace engineering while participating in an aerospace program put on by Lockheed Martin. During her senior year of high school, Fletcher received an internship at NASA in Langley, Virginia. She also landed a research internship at the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2014. The internship involved assisting in the research of landing performance in aircraft.
After graduating high school, she attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and received her Bachelor of Science in Aerospace Engineering in June 2017, graduating with a GPA of 5.0, which is perfect plus extra credit. She participated in a mentorship program to help other students at MIT. After her first year, she participated in undergraduate research studying design optimization of aircraft at MIT. During her second year, she again participated in undergraduate research, this time studying Network Analysis. During her junior and senior years of college, Tiera participated in internships at Boeing. From June 2015 to June 2016, she was a systems engineering intern where she helped design, test, and collaborate with other professionals on Boeing products. The following year from June 2016 to 2017, she was a design engineer and stress analyst intern at Boeing where she helped with the design process and analysis of the Space Launch System for NASA.
After graduating from MIT, Tiera took up a position at Boeing as a structural analysis engineer. She is one of the lead engineers and designers working on the Space Launch System for NASA which aims to put humans on Mars. The area that Tiera works on is the exploratory upper stage of the spacecraft that helps the craft complete its ascent phase. She is part of the Engine Section Task Leading team responsible for this, of which she is the youngest member.
Tiera has received a few recognitions and awards, including the Albert G. Hill Prize at MIT, the Most Promising Engineer - Industry Award at the 201 Black Engineer of the Year Awards, and the 2017 Good Housekeeping's Awesome Woman Award. She also participated in June 2018 as a keynote speaker at Impact'18 in Krakow where speakers discuss innovations and business models to share with the world what work they are doing.
Come back next Wednesday for a blog where you can learn about another female scientist that is changing our world as we know it!