EngSpotlight Perspective Series: Aerospace Engineering

Amelia Barnuevo Cevallos 
1st-Year Aerospace Engineering
First-Year Ambassador

I am interested in spacecraft within aerospace engineering. I'm heavily influenced by Interstellar. My love for the stars has always been there, and I wanted to study something astronomy based, more theory based, because I love research.How has your first year shaped your understanding of what Aerospace Engineering actually involves?

Aside from the responsibility and ethics, you meet a lot of professionals at TMU. All your professors are people that are well-versed in their engineering. For example my material science professor has been working in the industry forever, and he knows a lot about the stuff that goes on there. My physics teacher is a chemistry person as well. It gets you thinking of how many paths are actually there for engineering students. You might think you’re in Aerospace and there's just one straight path, but you can stream into so many places and do so much stuff. It's actually so broad.

James Corea 
2nd-Year Aerospace Engineering
Payload Lead, MetRocketry

Design teams let you practice engineering and boost your resume because it's hard to get jobs and internships these days. Having lots of stuff on your resume from these design teams is really good. I highly recommend it!

Can you explain how specialization works in the Aerospace Engineering program?

Specialization in Aerospace Engineering consists of three choices: aircraft, spacecraft and avionics. Spacecraft is mostly concentrated on satellites. It's a lot of orbital mechanics and basically engineering systems when you're not on Earth. Aircraft is when you're still on Earth like planes, rockets, pretty much everything like that. And then avionics is very complicated electronic stuff including operating systems, ground systems and electrical systems all around. The stream that I specialized in was aircraft as I'm not too good with electronics, and I'm not too interested in orbital stuff. So I went with aircraft because planes are cool, rockets are cool, and I have a lot of experience in that field. 

Khushi Srivastava
3rd-Year Aerospace Engineering
Ex-CFD Intern, BRP

Two skills that my courses taught me were Catia and MATLAB. If you don't know Catia, it will take a little bit of effort, but obviously you can learn a different software like SolidWorks or Fusion 360. In the company I work for, Catia was used. I was happy to know these skills beforehand.

Tell us about your internship position and what was the interview process like?

I loved it. My position was a Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) intern, and when I heard about this interview, I was very scared. I had to watch all the YouTube tutorials to learn about how Ansys works, how dynamic CFD works. I was trying to gain all the knowledge I could. The courses I took help, but I just wanted to have extra knowledge about the field. The interview was super technical for me. But in that technical interview, they didn't ask anything related to CFD. They only asked things related to your understanding. They just wanted to understand my knowledge on thermodynamics and heat transfer, how things work in my head, and if I am able to problem-solve. There are other aspects too, like behavioural interviews.  My position was very interesting and technical. I had to run simulations, do meshes and apply my own ideas to designs.

Reva Chaudhary 
4th-Year Aerospace Engineering
Graduate 

As an aerospace engineer, it is important for us to think outside the box. The world is changing and we have to have a sympathetic and empathetic mindset, not just a robotic mindset to make things happen.

What's something you have done during your undergraduate career that you think sets a bar as a job?

What sets me apart as a candidate is that I've lived through change. I've moved across countries, faced uncertainties and still built a story that I'm proud of. After my second year, I worked at Bombardier. I started in May and I completed my internship in April while still taking courses. So there was a lot on my plate. Being an international student, I also had to support myself, pay my own rent and everything. So while I was working at Bombardier, I used to also work at Best Buy. I also worked at Unilever and then later on started working at Pratt and Whitney. Then in the summer of 2024, I was applying everywhere, and I was very frustrated because I could not find a job anywhere in Canada. My mom called one day and said, why are you so focused on applying just in Canada? Why not somewhere else? And that got me applying, and I eventually got a job in Germany! That is something that I'm really proud of, because I know it was a big step for me to come to Canada all by myself, and then go to Germany. So that is something that sets me apart, because I've lived through so much change and came out stronger.