We started off the conference with opening speaker, Dawn Schaible, Director of Engineering at NASA Langley Research Center. She provided insight to NASA Langley’s past, present, and future. She overviewed NASA’s planned return America to the moon in 2024. This will include America’s first woman to step foot on the moon.
Anne Weiss and Rosemary Smith followed up with a rousing and eye opening presentation on how learning is changing for children. We need to reimagine learning and we need to inspire the future STEM students
The Statistics Session 1 had great presentations by Doug Fisher, Manuela Bucci, and David Hansch. Manuela was presented with honorary mention for her paper with Colin MacFarlane.
Bill Boze, John Hargrave, and Yi-Ling Tam presented after lunch on the Mass Properties Certification SAWE is working towards. They reviewed the benefits for SAWE and its members, market survey results that have helped build their roadmap, and a notional model. If you want to be involved in the certification process, please contact Yi-Ling
Anjie Emmett started off the afternoon statistics session. Having worked on the abort system for the Orion space crew module, she discussed applying the law of propagation of uncertainties. Robert Hundl followed with an overview of evaluating Center of Gravity Envelope using a probabilistic approach. He went over Monte Carlo Simulations in Excel and how we can use these for sensitivity studies as well as providing us with a sense of risk.
I ended the day with Nick Marickovich’s presentation on his journey on the Appalachian Trail and how backpack weight effected this. Great presentation!
I would love to hear how the other sessions went and your thoughts on the day and the presentations!
Doug Fisher 
Dawn Schaible
Melissa,
Great topics, with plenty of food for thought – wish I could be there!