AIAA Homeland Defense Interceptor Design Competition : The Influence of Gender & Race on Women in Engineering

Engineering work often exists at the intersection of technical innovation and social responsibility. My two recent projects—a research initiative focused on mitigating the impacts of personal privilege in engineering and a team-based submission to the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) undergraduate design competition demonstrates how a socio-technical perspective can enrich different domains of engineering. While these projects differ in content and approach, both examine how engineering can be more equitable, sustainable, and responsive to specific human contexts.
My research project aimed to explore how layers of personal privilege, related to race and gender, can silently shape the engineering workplace and academic environments. As a white woman, I wanted to explore how I could mitigate the negative impacts on my fellow female engineers, but found that the blatant lack of resources comparing the experiences of white women against women of color in engineering was significant. I pivoted to an approach focused on educating white women about their privilege and how, in a society that still considers white women as "diversity hires," DEI remains essential in engineering, not only to increase diversity but also to improve technical advancements that suffer when engineers continue to be predominantly male and white. Privilege often manifests in subtle but powerful ways: who gets hired, who speaks in meetings, whose ideas are implemented, and who gets credit for successes. To address this, my research examined existing literature on diversity and inclusion in STEM and drew from theories in social science and engineering ethics. The key concepts I explored were tokenism/spotlighting, systemic barriers exacerbated by white women's proximity to white men, and the lack of belonging in the female engineering community, especially among women of color. Through this work, I discovered how difficult it is to persist in engineering when you are constantly upheld for your differences and isolated from the rest of your professional community—and that all engineers must be conscious of how their backgrounds and assumptions influence their work. The project not only deepened my awareness of systemic dynamics within engineering workplaces but also reinforced the importance of critical self-awareness as a tool for improving both team dynamics and engineering outcomes.
Concurrently, my team participated in the AIAA 2025 Undergraduate Design Competition, where we were tasked with designing an Autonomous Homeland Interceptor—creating a cost-effective, unmanned aerial vehicle capable of detecting, intercepting, and neutralizing hostile airborne threats within U.S. airspace. Our design emphasized optimizing aerodynamic properties through the aircraft's modular aerospace architecture and ensuring affordability within the constraints of government-furnished equipment. We carefully evaluated system requirements, including speed, range, payload capacity, and guidance capabilities. The project demanded attention not only to aerodynamics and propulsion but also to ethical and strategic considerations, such as minimizing collateral damage, safeguarding civilian airspace, and ensuring responsible use of autonomous decision-making in military contexts, especially given the domestic setting. We employed systems engineering methodologies to balance trade-offs between cost, performance, and reliability, aiming to maximize the budget while exceeding expectations. Throughout the project, we also discussed how trust in autonomous systems—especially those used in defense—depends heavily on redundancy, particularly when the system’s primary use involves intercepting enemy attacks with missiles.
At first glance, these two projects seem to inhabit different worlds: one focused on human dynamics in the workplace, the other on aerospace systems for national defense. However, both share a common foundation in sociotechnical awareness due to the critical nature of their goals. Each required an understanding that technical systems are never designed in a vacuum; they reflect the values, assumptions, and goals of the people who create them. The motivation behind the AIAA project was growing geopolitical tension driving the need for domestic defense systems. Likewise, the growing disregard for bridging the gap in engineering diversity made both projects relevant to the modern engineer. In my research project, the challenge was to make the invisible forces of privilege visible and manageable within engineering teams. In the AIAA competition, the challenge was to build a technical solution that remained accountable to societal values like safety, equity, and ethics—even when the system itself operates without direct human control. Both projects reinforced my belief that engineers must be trained not only to build systems but to ask critical questions about how those systems function in human environments. Whether designing a workplace that enables fair collaboration or a UAV system with national security implications, the work of engineering is always both social and technical. Engaging with these two projects side by side deepened my appreciation for holistic, human-aware engineering—and reminded me that innovation without reflection is incomplete. Self-awareness within the engineering discipline, especially as someone who holds social power within a system that “rewards whiteness,” is paramount to being a responsible engineer who wants to make the world a better place rather than destroying it from within my own community.

School of Engineering and Applied Science
Bachelor of Science Aerospace Engineering
Technical Advisor: Dr. Thomas Ward
STS Advisor: Karina Rider
Technical Team Members: Nora Wilkerson, Eric Fryer, Evan Hahn, June Wiles, Matthew Shin, Mohammad Ali, Reid Smith and Will Couch