Another small biographies post. Today we'll go through a few different Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders who are notable engineers.
"Kalpana Chawla was an American astronaut and the first woman of Indian origin to go into outer space. She was born in Karnal, India in 1962 and after getting a degree in Aeronautical Engineering from Punjab Engineering College, moved to the U.S. to study aerospace engineering at the University of Texas in Arlington. She graduated with her Master of Science degree in 1984 and went to earn a second Masters and PhD in 1988.
After working at NASA as a researcher for several years, she became a naturalized U.S. citizen and applied for the NASA Astronaut Corps. She was selected for her first flight in 1996 and first flew on Space Shuttle Columbia in 1997 as a mission specialist and primary robotic arm operator for STS-87. In 2003, during her second flight into space as part of the STS-107 mission, the Columbia space shuttle disintegrated during re-entry. She and the other six crew members were all killed.
Chawla was posthumously awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor, and several streets, universities and institutions have been named in her honor."
2. Chantale Wong, US Director of the Asian Development Bank
"In 1980, she received a BS in civil engineering at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa and, in 1982, an MS in environmental engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. She received an MPA from Harvard Kennedy School in 1988. She served in a number of positions in the US government. Under Barack Obama, she served as vice president for administration and finance, and CFO, at the Millennium Challenge Corporation from 2011 to 2014. Previously, she was budget director at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in 2011–12, acting budget director at the U.S. Department of the Treasury, and as the chief of staff to the director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Under Bill Clinton, Wong represented the United States on the board of directors of the Asian Development Bank. In 1989, Wong co-founded the Conference on Asian Pacific American Leadership. On July 2, 2021, Wong was nominated by President Joe Biden to be the next director of the Asian Development Bank. The Senate's Foreign Relations Committee held hearings on her nomination on October 26, 2021. On December 15, 2021, the committee voted to report her nomination favorably to the Senate floor. On February 8, 2022, the entire Senate moved to confirm Wong's nomination in a vote of 66–31. Wong was sworn in by Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen on February 23, 2022."
3.Isabella Aiona Abbott, ethnobotanist
Isabella Aiona Abbott, from Hawaii, was an ethnobotanist who studied Pacific marine algae. Abbott is especially known for her research on edible seaweed (limu), of which there are more than 70 types, and has been called the "First Lady of Limu." (Fun fact! Seaweed is a form of algae, so limu is edible algae.)
4. Tetsuya Theodore "Ted" Fujita, meteorologist
Ted Fujita was a Japanese American meteorologist who studied storms and tornadoes and visited hundreds of tornado sites to gather data about tornadoes from the aftermath. Fujita, who became known as "Mr. Tornado," developed the Fujita Scale (F-Scale), a six-point scale to measure the strength of tornadoes. Among his other meteorological discoveries were the concepts of downbursts and microbursts, sudden changes in airflow that can be dangerous. (Fun fact! Although he spent much of his life researching and studying tornadoes, he didn't see one in person until he was in his 60s!) AND Texas Tech has his papers!
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