Krysti Papadopoulos
For Krysti Papadopoulos ’13, electrical and computer engineering has been a tool for innovation and a way to improve people’s day-to-day lives. “This became apparent to me as a kid growing up in Greece, modifying toys and building assistive technology devices for friends with motor disabilities,” she says.
Today, her passion for engineering translates into her current role as an engineer at XCOR Aerospace, where she is part of a team working on manned sub-orbital spacecraft.
“I use engineering to help advance aerospace technologies—which have been virtually unchanged for many decades—and improve upon the rate of access to space,” she says. “The best part of my job is hearing directly from the students and researchers who will be using XCOR’s platform for routine space access.”
The path to XCOR emerged from her undergraduate experiences at Johns Hopkins, where she became involved in research at the Civilian Space Division at the Applied Physics Laboratory (APL). One of the most surprising things to Papadopoulos was how open and accessible the researchers at Johns Hopkins and APL made themselves. She recalls reading papers and knocking on the doors of the authors at APL with questions about their research.
“Researchers are very receptive to answering all sorts of questions and offering advice,” she says. “My advice for aspiring engineers is to keep on seizing opportunities. Network, knock on professors’ doors, attend events, join engineering student groups like IEEE, and send emails to research groups you would like to be a part of. There is nothing to lose, and the JHU community is very receptive!”
Interested in reaching out to Krysti or sharing your thoughts on commercializing space or how to get off this rock? Contact her via Twitter (@cosmicKrysti) or LinkedIn.