Sparked by fantasy, student seizes real-life opportunites

AE junior Sophie Pieta has seen the film “Top Gun Maverick” seven times, so far.  The film opens with Tom Cruise’s character test flying an experimental hypersonic vehicle. This summer Pieta is an intern at Hermeus in Atlanta, Georgia, a company developing a real-life version of Hollywood’s fictitious “Darkstar” vehicle.

“They just did this really cool test—a transition turbojet to ramjet engine, which is really hard to do, because they work in totally different sonic conditions,” Pieta said. “It’s the first time anyone's ever done something like that. And now I get to work on their engines team. I’m super excited because they're planning to make a commercial vehicle that goes Mach 5.”

Pieta has had an impressive series of fellowships, and internships during her first three years as an aerospace engineering undergrad at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. “I’ve hopped from one thing to the next. Every four months I’m in a different place and I’m having a blast.”

She traced the string of opportunities back to two classes she took her first year on campus.

“In Engineering 100 fall semester we were split into groups of four and each group had to pick a topic for a final presentation,” Pieta said. “I was new to aerospace, so I just let the other kids in my group pick the topic. There was this one kid who was really into hypersonics so that’s what we did, and I thought, man, this is really cool.”

That first year’s spring semester, Pieta took Computer Science 101.  The professor sent out a note that the Center for Exascale-enabled Scramjet Design was hiring for the summer. “I forwarded it to my hypersonics group, then thought, wait a minute, why don't I try to get it."

Pieta applied, got the job and spent the summer working on a research project while also becoming proficient at the computer programs Python and Github.

“There was also a lecture series. Every week I learned about the chemistry and physics of scramjet engines,” she said. “It was a great educational introduction into the scramjet technologies.”

It hasn’t been all success. Pieta applied for a very competitive fellowship for the summer after her sophomore year and didn’t get it. Disappointed, but undeterred, she applied for a similar program and was accepted. The Zed Factor Fellowship, which is open to any underrepresented aerospace student, included a summit in Washington, D.C. for professional development and an internship at Astra in Alameda, California in propulsion development.

“I learned a lot about propulsion at Astra, but I also had a couple of data analysis projects—taking in hot fire engine data and turning it into color-coded graphs.” She said it was that aspect of the work that continued a theme of programming in her education. “I think that’s what gave me the qualifications to work at SpaceX this past semester as a Falcon engineering intern and do a lot more of the data routing.”

When Pieta arrived at SpaceX, she was assigned to a project she didn’t expect to be doing.  They knew she had experience in coding and that’s what they needed at the time.

“I was doing code to make their post-flight analysis go faster for the loads and dynamics team,” she said. “SpaceX wants to launch 100 rockets this year, and their processes to analyze everything has to go faster and faster. I used Python, MatLab, and some of their internal software to automate graphs. And I learned a lot about programming best practices. I could access all the sensor data from the flight. For one of the reports, I was looking at a couple of failure criterion. For instance, if line A goes above line B, then it fails. If there is static acceleration and line A doesn’t move, then it fails and depending on that you might see the output or not see the output. It was creative. There’s a lot of logic involved and it was fun putting those building blocks together.”

After her SpaceX internship was completed, Pieta had three weeks free before beginning her summer internship. Not only did she receive the fellowship she’d applied for a year ago unsuccessfully, but she was matched with her dream company, Hermeus.

In addition to fellowships and internships, Pieta has also received a number of scholarships, including an Engineering Visionary Scholarship in the spirit of the late Professor Scott R. White’s deep commitment to providing students undergraduate research opportunities. Pieta said she is extremely grateful for the financial assistance scholarships have provided.

“It has allowed me to not have to worry about having an on-campus job and given me the freedom to pursue non-academic interests,” she said. Pieta was on the university rowing team for two years, getting up at 4:30 every morning to row, then back to campus four hours later. “It was intense, but it gave me an awesome community on campus, and I think that’s important—to have a community outside of the academics.”

Although she gave up rowing her junior year to focus more on coursework and knowing she’d be off campus at SpaceX one semester, she said she may be able to return to rowing as a super senior. She’ll graduate in December 2024.

“At the moment, between internships, I feel like a nomadic rocket scientist. Every year in aerospace engineering, I've come across a new topic that's been super interesting to me. And right now, I’m on hypersonics and propulsion. I like things that go fast, but whether that's in aerospace so like the scramjet side or in rocketry on the propulsion/engine side I'm not really sure.”

Pieta said her internship with SpaceX was a little blip to her trajectory, because on loads and dynamics, she wasn’t working with engines. Although she found the work interesting and educational, the experience solidified for her that she prefers to have her hands on hardware.

“I want to be where the things go boom, to put it very childishly,” she said. “There’s a lot you can do with engines like analysis and design. It’s just all in a pretty little package that you can also set on fire. I love it.”