David Erickson’s interest in engineering grew out of his pleasure of designing things. When he was younger, growing up in Ely, Minnesota he would spend a lot of time designing and building projects in his dad’s shop. In high school David’s teachers said he had an ability to find interesting ways of approaching difficult tasks or alternative ways of thinking. These characteristics, David says, are essential to the mind of an engineer. 

In high school David already knew that he was interested in aerospace engineering. His father is a pilot for the Forest Service and a number of other family members are also pilots. In high school David had three related projects he wanted to eventually work on: flights to Mars, personal space flight, and designing inexpensive aircraft civilian purchase. 

For his undergraduate degree, David left Ely to attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology studying aeronautics and astronautics. Throughout his studies at MIT his interest in aerospace engineering has evolved and matured.

The field of aerospace engineering is one with a lot of career opportunities.  David was lucky enough to accept a job offer from General Electric Aviation, one of the largest jet engine producers in the world, that will begin after his graduation in the summer of 2010.  His first few years of work will entail a series of rotations, allowing David to sample a number of different sectors within the company and in the end decide on his department. GE also provides the opportunity for its employees to continue with their education while working. David hopes to return to MIT to pursue a Masters.

David says that internships are the keys to post-graduation opportunity. According to him, students who have internships are more likely to find jobs quickly after, if not before, graduation. David was one of the first of his classmates to get offered a position, which will be at the Lynn, Massachusetts plant where he interned the summer before his senior year. During his college education David had two internships, both of which he found through MIT career fairs.

In the summer of 2008 he worked at Orbital Science, a company near Washington D.C. that designs space systems. During that summer David was part of the team working on the Taurus-II, a rocket to resupply the Space Station. David and another intern created a system for managing all the information being generated by this growing program. Their database tracked all of the analysis, correspondence, and designs related to the project. Since he was responsible for the organization of all of this material David was able to see first-hand all of the various steps of design. In addition he worked on a technical manual for the Taurus-II launch vehicle. His work on the manual, much like a car manual, and database gave him a full picture of the company’s design process and business practices.

His second internship at GE Aviation, which led to his job, was working with the engine repair tech group.  When an engine is damaged this group of engineers develops ways to repair them so that the damaged parts don’t have to be completely replaced. Although this internship was outside of David’s primary interest in propulsion, he said that the experience of working in repairs opened his thinking and designs by considering ways to make them easily repairable.

Through his passion David developed the natural engineer instincts his teachers noticed in him long ago. Although he might not be developing the exact projects he envisioned years ago, he is finding ways to let his ideas and future take flight in new and unexpectedly challenging ways in the exciting and dynamic field of science.