PathSource - ENGINEERING PROFESSOR/SPACECRAFT DESIGN RESEARCHER: Failures Are Successes As Well

× We offer our visitors 5 free video views. Download the free iOS app here for access to thousands of videos. Schools may contact us for full platform access.

Tourist 2660431221001 2700927045001 vs 52460266e4b0921783fc957f 1592194026001

Tags:

ENGINEERING PROFESSOR/SPACECRAFT DESIGN RESEARCHER: Failures Are Successes As Well

About this video

Michael is an engineering professor and researcher of spacecraft design and microsystems. On a typical day, he will teach one engineering class, then work with his graduate students on their research. His current research project are performed in conjunction with NASA and the National Science Foundation. He currently spends part of his year working with LSU and spends summers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory working on research projects for spacecraft design. He tells us that failures are also successes in a way because you have eliminated an option and are one step closer to figuring out what you want.

School: University of Michigan - University of Florida

Degree: Mechanical Engineering - Aerospace Engineering

Job Title: Professor of Engineering and Spacecraft Design Researcher

Employer: Louisiana State University

Job Summary: Aerospace Engineers

Job Description

Aerospace engineers design aircraft, spacecraft, satellites, and missiles. In addition, they test prototypes to make sure that they function according to design. Aerospace engineers are employed in industries whose workers design or build aircraft, missiles, systems for national defense, or spacecraft. Aerospace engineers are employed primarily in analysis and design, manufacturing, industries that perform research and development, and the federal government.

On-the-Job Training

None

Quick Facts

Average salary

National Statistic Change Location

Confirm

$60,000 - $145,000

Projected Job Growth

0 to 10 percent

Typical schedule

Full-time

Typical workplace

Office, Remote, Indoor, Home, Physically demanding

Personal Qualities

Analytical skills, Written communication skills, Teamwork, Mathematical skills

Educational Path

Education Requirement

Bachelor's degree

Recommended Education Degree

Bachelor's degree

Recommended Majors

Aeronautical Engineering
Engineering

Related Careers

Aerospace Engineering and Operations Technicians
Architectural and Engineering Managers
Computer Hardware Engineers
Electrical and Electronic Engineering Technicians
Electrical and Electronics Engineers
Industrial Engineers
Materials Engineers
Mechanical Engineers

View Detailed Career Data

PathSource provides free English transcriptions for each of our informational interviews on video which will appear here after you have signed in. Our advanced transcriptions are highly interactive. They scroll down automatically as the video plays and users can jump to a specific part of the video by clicking on any word in the transcript.

For a small fee, we offer transcriptions in different languages, making PathSource a great tool for English Language Learners. This feature is currently available for customers in the education field only.

Please contact us at support@pathsoruce.com if you have any questions or would like to get a price quote for advanced transcripts offered in a second language.

P3.instances[0].transcript.parse_transcript_data({"transcript":"Hi, I'm Michael Martin. I teach engineering at Louisiana State University. And I do research on microsystems and spacecraft design. When you teach engineering and do research, I typically have one class a day that I will teach and work with the students. And then I do research with the graduate students. And we will meet and go over the research that they've been doing and the designs they've been coming up with and try to sort out the technical questions that they may have. And then some of my day is actually trying to figure out what the next steps are for research and prepare for work with NASA or the National Science Foundation trying to explain why I want to do this and why it would be a good project to work on. Then I also work a lot with undergraduate students doing design projects and doing engineering design competitions. Well, in terms of education, I went to University of Florida for a degree in mechanical engineering, then the University of Michigan for a master's in mechanical engineering. Then I went to work for Boeing for a few years, doing design work on the 777. And then after a few years, I realized I wanted to get much more into the higher level technical analysis and didn't want to be using equations that somebody else had figured out to design stuff. I wanted to go ahead and figure out what the really basic physics were. And so that's why I went on for a PhD in aerospace engineering. And then after that, I went to the Naval Research Lab for a few years to do research on chemical and biological weapons detection and then joined the faculty at LSU. And then, in addition to my work at Louisiana State University, about half the time I'm out for the summer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory doing work on the research projects for spacecraft design. What I wish I knew when I was younger was just the value of exploring different things in terms of career paths. I wound up doing something I love. But there was a little bit of oh, do I want to do this or do I want to do that? And I think it's good to really carefully look at a bunch of options and go ahead and do something and be willing to fail. And for instance, when we have students coming as undergraduate research students and they're launching into the research projects, what I tell them is that if they do the undergraduate research project and all they learn by doing the research is that they hate doing research, the experience has been a fantastic success. Because they have learned that it's something that they don't want to do. And they've learned it before they put the time in to get the PhD in engineering. And I tell the same thing to my graduate students when they go do internships with companies. If you go work for a company, find that you don't like doing that work, that's still a successful internship. Because you've really come one step closer to figuring out what kind of work you're interested in. ","file":{"id":265615,"video_id":"2700869771001","name":"70734079","duration":205290,"thumbnail_url":null}});