REPRESENTING WOMEN
From Ottawa to Mars and beyond
The best teachers encourage their students to aim for the moon and stars.
Emily Gleeson does that every day in her work as a second-year PhD student in aerospace engineering at Ryerson University.
Gleeson, who grew up in south Ottawa and attended Hillcrest High School, recently learned she has won a 2018 Amelia Earhart Fellowship, part of the Zonta International Foundation advocating for women in science, business and public life.
The Earhart Fellowship honours up to 30 women around the globe for their PhD/doctoral work in aerospace science or aerospace engineering. Gleeson is the lone Canadian to be honoured this year and there were no Canadians on last year’s list. One 2018 recipient, Cornell student Sarah Elizabeth Morris, has dual citizenship from Australia and Canada.
Gleeson is humbled to win an award so close to her heart. A passionate voice for women in science, Gleeson dreamed of being an astronaut when she was 10 years old.
“I kind of put it to the back of my mind because it was similar to saying I wanted to be a movie star or a pop singer,” Gleeson says. “I wish I hadn’t disregarded it. Now I realize, while I still want to become an astronaut — I can also work on space exploration here on Earth.”
Her calling in science sparked a gutsy move back to academia at the ripe old age of 28, after killing it in the real world. Gleeson had graduated from Queen’s University with a BASc in applied math and mechanical engineering and spent six years as a working professional: two years as a project manager for a mechanical contractor and then four as a manager in logistics and business operations planning at Procter and Gamble.
She was set for life in a management position with a global company, earning more money than she’d ever imagined, and possibly more (here she laughs) than she ever will again. Yet, something was missing.
“My passion wasn’t there ... I thought I could contribute something to the world — to space exploration,” she says.
Returning to school was “terrifying,” Gleeson admits. The only thing more frightening ? The pang of regret she felt would be there if she didn’t take a shot.
The Earhart Fellowship — and accompanying US$10,000 cheque — are indicators she did the right thing, and as a student she is beyond grateful for the financial boost. Packing a reward of its own is Gleeson’s research, which examines ways to improve navigation and control techniques needed to explore Mars and other far-flung space destinations.
This includes robotic technologies because humans face great challenges in longer space travel.
“There is a need to develop technologies so spacecraft can go and assemble themselves, build an international space station closer to the moon or Mars so that once humans do get there something will be set up for them,” Gleeson says.
In October, Gleeson will be presenting a paper at the International Astronautical Congress in Bremen, Germany, discussing a co-ordinated capture between two spacecraft.
There isn’t a lot of literature on deeper space travel, so Gleeson has to build on current technologies and established theories regarding lower-orbit exploration.
So passionate is Gleeson about space travel she gets moved to tears at the sight of a space launch, although seeing all those men in the control room of the SpaceX Falcon Heavy launch on Feb. 6 quickly brought her back to earth. Where were the female scientists?
Gleeson explores this issue as part of a first blog on her new website, spacebroaddity.com.
At 30, Gleeson is already a leader in her field, directing more women toward STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and mathematics). In her blog, she posted job options at SpaceX along with the educational path a woman would need to get there. Only a fraction of working aerospace engineers are women.
“We need more women in STEM so they can get into the workforce, but we also need employers to offer equal opportunities,” Gleeson says. “It’s definitely not an equal place to be — yet.”
Don’t be surprised if SpaceX or some new Canadian space company scoops Gleeson in the future. Meanwhile, she continues to advocate for women while working on a doctorate that could take another two to four years to complete.
Gleeson still gets goofy comments when people first hear she is working on a PhD in aerospace engineering.
“Oh, you are way too pretty to be doing that,” she has been told.
“People think it’s a compliment, but I really hate it,” Gleeson says.
Not much gets in her way, and never did. When her younger brother, Dean, started playing minor hockey (he was a competitive goaltender), Emily told her parents, Donna and Ed Shepherdson, she deserved ice time, too.
Soon, soccer and swimming became her favourite activities, when she wasn’t dreaming of earning flight wings, like the iconic Earhart or modern astronaut Julie Payette. Earhart was herself a Zonta club member and the Earhart award was created in 1938 after the pilot disappeared over the Pacific Ocean in 1937.
“Why not go to space?” the little girl in Emily always wondered.
Gleeson may get there yet. And if not, she will surely help others negotiate their way to Mars and beyond.