Scholarship Award Alumni - Lindsey Jacobson

As a child, Lindsey wanted to be an inventor so she could create things to help people.  But inspired by the Hubble Deep Field image, she also became interested in astronomy.  It was a visit to Kennedy Space Center and seeing the beauty of engineering in how the space shuttle was conceptualized that led her to pursue aerospace engineering.   She finds engineering rewarding because the principles of engineering design can be applied to many problems across many fields.  She says, “I also love that engineering design is fundamentally humanistic – products and systems are designed by people for people.”

She has researched how people approach redesigning complex systems in response to unexpected changes in operating requirements.  While everything else seemed to be falling apart during the pandemic, working on this brought Lindsey a lot of joy, and she is proud that this was published in the proceedings of the ASME’s International Design and Technology Conference.  She also spent two summers studying the risk mitigation process for the James Webb Space Telescope and applying lessons learned to other large space missions planned for the coming decade.

Lindsey is also passionate about STEM outreach and says, “access to quality education is one of the most important things that a person can have.”  She has participated both in-person and virtually in NC State’s STEM outreach to Rwanda, leading primary school students through engineering activities and introducing teachers to new educational apps.  At NC State she has also organized tutoring sessions for introductory engineering students, especially through the Women and Minority Engineering Program.  She also participates in JWST outreach activities, hoping that JWST’s science and engineering advancements will inspire students to pursue engineering and space science.

Update (January 2024): Lindsay is mechanical engineering Ph.D. student at North Carolina State University and interning at NASA Langley Research Center.