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#WSGCStudentSpotlight

November 11, 2019

Mary Claire Mancl
Senior
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Major: Mechanical Engineering

Congratulations to Mary Claire Mancl, this week’s #WSGCStudentSpotlight! Mary Claire is currently in her senior year at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where she is majoring in mechanical engineering. Previously the recipient of an Industry Internship, last year Mary Claire received a NASA Internship, working at the Marshall Space Flight Center over the summer!

Last winter, Mary Claire completed her Industry Internship, a co-op at the Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC), where she helped work on the Atmospheric Monitoring and Fire Detection subsystems for the Dream Chaser spaceplane. She was also responsible for designing components of the Medical Bay, Workstations for the NextSTEP-2 Lunar Orbital Platform Gateway Habitat Module prototype, and she helped develop new technologies for growing plants in zero gravity.

Over the summer, Mary Claire worked as a NASA intern at the Marshall Space Flight Center. There, Mary Claire was a member of the Human Factors Engineering Team, the team responsible for designing the human interfaces to flight and ground systems that will enable human missions beyond low Earth orbit. Such missions will require onboard autonomy, as decisions that would have been made by ground controllers will need to be made by flight crews. Maintenance activities will also need to be planned and executed by the crew onboard. Mary Claire’s responsibilities included designing examples of layout designs and developing prototypes of systems to be controlled by a vehicle management system.

Congratulations Mary Claire, and best of luck in your future!

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