Faces of SLS: Amber Favaregh

I am what some call a tunnel hugger or tunnel rat. I love wind tunnel testing. Along with a talented team at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Virginia, I have the pleasure of testing in wind tunnels and merging wind tunnel data with analytical data from computational fluid dynamics to build aerodynamic databases for the Space Launch System. As the deputy lead for the Langley SLS aerodynamics team, I plan and participate in wind tunnel tests for SLS to help us understand the aerodynamic effects on the rocket during flight inside the atmosphere. I ultimately get to be a part of helping the nation get to destinations never explored before by humans.

Early on I thought that becoming an engineer was not really in my realm of possibilities. Growing up in Kansas, I never knew anyone who was an engineer. However, when I was in high school, I took a physics class and saw a section in my textbook that had a picture of a car, suggesting a career pertaining to vehicle aerodynamics. It seemed really cool at the time, so I started looking into it and ended up finding Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Arizona. I decided to leave Kansas because I wanted to do something big, and that’s exactly what I did.

I received my bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering from Embry-Riddle. I then received my master’s degree in experimental methods of aerospace engineering from Old Dominion University in Virginia, resulting in a job at Lockheed Martin in Dallas, followed by my current job at ViGYAN Inc. as a contractor for NASA.

When I’m not working as an engineer, I am enjoying my time as the mother of a toddler. I also spend great deal of time practicing and teaching yoga. I love yoga and the balance it brings into my life — so much that I opened my own yoga studio.

One thing I’ve learned so far in my life is that you have to find what you’re passionate about. I count myself lucky to work with a group of people both at NASA and my studio who are so incredibly passionate and dedicated to the work we do. Being happy is a choice, not a destination. We can choose a career based on what we think will bring us the most outward gain toward an idea of what happiness is supposed to be, or we can just do what we enjoy and be happy now.