Growing up, Caitlin Oswald always wanted to be a ballerina. Then, in high school, she enrolled in an introductory engineering course called Scientific Principles. Oswald was the only girl in the class of 15.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe did electronics and robotics, and we built LEGO cars, and pneumatics, and all that stuff,\u201d she remembers. \u201cI absolutely loved it, and I think I did better than all the boys did. They all tried to cheat off me, and I wouldn\u2019t let them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Today Oswald is a mechanical engineer at LAI International, a leading aerospace and defense contractor. In 2015, Fast Company <\/em>magazine named her to its annual list of the 100 Most Creative People in Business for her pioneering work in additive manufacturing. Oswald said that if she hadn\u2019t taken that high school course, her life might have taken a very different path. \u201cThat gave me confidence that being an engineer was definitely achievable. It wasn\u2019t this big, scary thing in the sky.\u201d<\/p>\n A Man\u2019s World<\/strong><\/p>\n Engineering is still an overwhelmingly male-dominated field, with women making up only about 15 percent of the profession. To boost that number, the University’s School of Engineering offers an annual summer program called BRIDGE for accepted freshmen from underrepresented groups, including women, African-Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans. Oswald was one of the program\u2019s beneficiaries, spending five weeks on campus in the summer before her freshman year taking engineering courses.<\/p>\n My goal when I talk to younger girls who are contemplating STEM is to tell them that you can do engineering and still be the person you want to be. — Caitlin Oswald '09 (ENG)<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Oswald excelled at the coursework, and by the end of the summer she had won a scholarship from the aerospace giant United Technologies, which would later lead to summer internships at the company.<\/p>\n At UConn she became one of only about a dozen female mechanical engineering students out of a total group of around 100. \u201cIt took a little bit of getting used to at the beginning that there were so few women, but by the end I almost considered it a benefit, because everybody knew who I was,\u201d Oswald said. \u201cI wasn\u2019t lost in a sea of people. If I called one of my professors and said, \u2018This is Caitlin,\u2019 they knew exactly who I was.\u201d<\/p>\n Scholarships kept coming, including the 2008 Altschuler Family Scholarship.<\/p>\n After earning bachelor\u2019s and master\u2019s degrees in mechanical engineering at UConn, Oswald took a job at the United Technologies subsidiary Pratt & Whitney, where she helped design high-tech aircraft engines. She became an expert in the emerging field of additive manufacturing, which uses 3-D printing technology to simplify the design process for complex products.<\/p>\n \u201cWith subtractive manufacturing, you start with a big block of material and you machine off what you don\u2019t need,\u201d Oswald explains. \u201cWith additive manufacturing, instead of starting with a big block, we start from nothing and only build material where we need it.\u201d<\/p>\n Additive manufacturing was revolutionizing the field of mechanical engineering, and Oswald was becoming known as a leading expert in the field. At Pratt & Whitney, her team developed new technologies that ended up in various platforms, including the Airbus geared turbofan jet engine that uses 16 percent less fuel and significantly reduces CO\u00b2 emissions. The team used 3-D printing every step of the way, creating life-size models of the engine parts to study how they could be improved.<\/p>\n \u201cWith additive manufacturing, the iteration of designs is very fast \u2013 you get a much quicker sense of how an assembly goes together, where the high-stress locations are on a part,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s very helpful to have a visual for that.\u201d<\/p>\n Her work on the Airbus engine earned Oswald a place on Fast Company<\/em>\u2019s 2015 list of the world\u2019s most creative businesspeople. The magazine flew Oswald and many of the other honorees to L.A. to participate in a conference on creativity and to tour area businesses, including Jessica Alba\u2019s line of baby-care products, The Honest Company.<\/p>\n \u201cThat was a very cool thing,\u201d Oswald said. \u201cI had never met a celebrity like that before.\u201d<\/p>\n Embrace It All<\/strong><\/p>\n Last October Oswald left Pratt & Whitney to join LAI International, a smaller aerospace and defense contractor where she was given the opportunity to assume a more prominent national role in the development of additive manufacturing. She gives regular talks to industry trade groups, and is now on a team that is creating the material and product specifications that will be adopted by the Federal Aviation Association and the Department of Defense.<\/p>\n Oswald still gets frustrated at the lack of women in engineering. Part of the solution, she says, is to provide early encouragement and opportunities for girls to explore the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields.<\/p>\n \u201cI think it\u2019s really important to introduce women to STEM at an early age,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd then you have to maintain their confidence in middle and high school.\u201d<\/p>\n She also emphasized that becoming an engineer doesn\u2019t mean you have to abandon your other interests. Although she never became a professional ballerina, Oswald still enjoys dancing.<\/p>\n \u201cMy goal when I talk to younger girls who are contemplating STEM is to tell them that you can do engineering and still be the person you want to be,” she says. “If you love science and technology, you can do that and still be a fashionista. You can embrace all those things about you that make you who you are.\u201d<\/p>\n\n