• Brooke Owens Fellow, Class of 2019

• University of California Irvine, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, '21

• Host Institution: Made in Space

• Mentors: Clay Mowry and Tanya Harrison

Amy Huynh is an undergraduate senior pursuing a double major in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of California, Irvine. Her interest in aerospace began in middle school with model rocket projects and her experience at a Federal Aviation Administration training as a Petty Officer in the United States Naval Sea Cadet Corps. As a first-generation Vietnamese-American student, she aspires to make a meaningful impact in the aerospace industry and to inspire future generations of girls from underprivileged backgrounds to confidently pursue their dreams of space exploration and aviation.

During her undergraduate freshman year, she joined the UCI CanSat senior design project where she helped with creating graphic visuals and meticulously enforcing document control of the Preliminary Design Review and Critical Design Review, which both earned 1st place in the international AIAA CanSat Competition. She also assisted with the design and construction of the atmospheric probe’s carbon fiber heat shield and later became the Operations Lead for the team.

Her research experiences started with working in the UCI Nanoscale Heat Transfer Lab to study the material analysis of semi-ordered nanostructures. She worked on building and improving the aerodynamic design of an MIT fog water collector to study effective freshwater collection techniques. She is also conducting her own engineering education research project at UCI to study how industry experience in the form of internships affects female engineering undergraduate students' learning experience in the classroom. In hopes of helping diversify the engineering enterprise, she is currently working in the Designing Education Lab at Stanford University, which resulted in a first-author research publication: Exploring how Innovation Self-efficacy Measures Relate to Engineering Internship Motivations and Outcomes.

She took a gap year in 2019 that led her to explore and gain hands-on experience in various sectors of the aerospace industry. During the gap year, she interned at NASA Goddard working on the Remote Occulter for the 2030s project to increase the engineering feasibility of direct exoplanet observations. As a Brooke Owens Fellow, Amy worked on in-space manufacturing technologies at Made In Space. She also worked on flight hardware and orbital and mission simulation for small satellite systems as an Engineering Pathways Intern at NASA Ames.

As a 2020 Matthew Isakowitz Fellow, she is interning at Astra on the Upper Stage Structures team. She has been working on qualification and acceptance testing of pressure regulators and redesigning the quick disconnect on the rocket. She is also working as a grant writing intern at Space for Humanity. Outside of aerospace, she is a social media manager and business partner of Revogue, a small business of luxury designer accessories.

Amy hopes to pursue an interdisciplinary career that touches on aerospace engineering, product design, fashion, and entrepreneurship. She also hopes to dedicate her research and career to making aerospace accessible for everyone and to uplift marginalized voices as she continues to learn her role in aerospace and find her own voice. Please feel free to reach out to her @AeroAstroAmy if you ever want to talk!