Ericsson, Aprille J.

• Born: April 1, 1963
• Place of Birth: Brooklyn, New York

American aerospace engineer

Aprille J. Ericsson, an aerospace engineer at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) in Greenbelt, Maryland, has the distinction of being not only the first African American woman to receive a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from Howard University in Washington, DC, but also the first American to receive a doctorate in that field with an aerospace specialization. At GSFC, she worked to ensure that spacecraft will perform well during NASA missions. Ericsson has also worked hard to increase diversity in the sciences, regularly visiting schools as a member of both Women of NASA and GSFC’s Speakers Bureau and encouraging young women and minority students to pursue careers in scientific fields. In 2024, she was appointed assistant secretary of defense for science and technology by President Joe Biden.

Early Life and Education

Aprille J. Ericsson was born on April 1, 1963, in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. Her parents separated when she was eight, and her mother raised Aprille and her two sisters in Brooklyn’s Roosevelt housing projects. Ericsson discovered her talent for math and science while attending Marine Park Junior High School, where she was the only Black student in the Special Progress program, which included instruction in mathematics, earth science, biology, and chemistry. Thanks in part to the encouragement and support of her mother, she achieved outstanding scores on state and city exams and once won second place in her junior high’s science fair. She passed the entrance exams for all three of New York City’s highly competitive public technical high schools. At the age of fifteen, she moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she lived with her grandparents while attending the Cambridge School of Weston, a prestigious private college-prep school that gave her a full scholarship three years in succession. She enjoyed sports and proved to have a talent for football, basketball, and softball, playing on student teams.

In the summer after her junior year of high school, Ericsson participated in UNITE (now known as Minority Introduction to Engineering, or MITE), a two-week program for African American students that inspired her to consider a career in aerospace engineering. “Over the course of the program, we were exposed to several engineering disciplines,” she told Michael Baine for Space.com (September 22, 2000). “One was civil engineering, where we made small bridges that were tested by loading until failure. That was my first attempt at designing anything as a pseudo-engineer. The director of the program was a biomedical engineer, which also interested me, but I decided I did not want to be a medical doctor because of the memorization needed and I did not want to do civil engineering/architecture because buildings and structures did not move.” Ericsson also visited an air-force base in New Hampshire, where her performance at the controls of a flight simulator indicated a level of ability comparable to that of a pilot. She maintained excellent grades and scored high on her PSATs; she also found the time to volunteer as a physical education instructor at a number of local elementary schools.

Ericsson was accepted as a student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge. During her freshman year, she attended an aerospace-engineering seminar in which she learned about “the different disciplines within aerospace,” as she told Michael Baine. “It also allowed me to meet various faculty members in the department and exposed me to their research. . . . I kept up my grades and was accepted into the aero/astro program.” As an undergraduate at MIT, Ericsson worked on several projects related to manned space missions. In 1986 she received a bachelor’s degree in aeronautical and astronautical engineering from MIT. With the help of a number of grants, she then attended Howard University as a graduate student in the Large Space Structures Institute. She also delivered technical papers in Germany, Canada, England, and throughout the United States. She earned both a master’s degree (1990) and a Ph.D. (1995) in mechanical engineering, making her the first African American woman to receive a doctorate in this discipline from Howard University.

Life’s Work

Ericsson was hired by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in 1992. She works in the Guidance, Navigation, and Control Center of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, where she concentrates on satellite projects such as the X-Ray Timing Explorer (XTE) and the Tropical Rain Forest Measurement Mission, testing spacecraft designs by conducting simulations of performance. She has worked on the Microwave Anisotropy Probe (MAP), a satellite designed to seek out clues to the origins of our galaxy, the Milky Way, by measuring the properties of cosmic microwave background radiation found in the sky. MAP launched on June 30, 2001, and, as Charles Bennett, the MAP Science Team’s principal investigator, told, it “is now successfully in its nominal orbit at the second Earth-Sun Lagrange point . . . a million miles from Earth.” Bennett added, “All systems are working very well.”

In an autobiographical statement Ericsson wrote that in the future, she hopes to work as “a mission specialist for the astronaut program, [an] Aerospace Engineering professor; and an advisor to the White House through the Office of Science and Technology Policy.”

Believing that the internet is a key component of disseminating information on technical careers to those who need it, Ericsson has created an email list through which she provides information to those interested in learning more about educational and employment opportunities in the sciences. “The Internet can also bring new resources to the African American community,” she told ZDNet (online). “In Washington, lots of African American kids use public computers to look for funding for college and to apply online. Who’s to say that the corner bookie couldn’t have earned an MIT degree if he had been given the opportunity? It costs money to be online, unfortunately, and a lot of people still can’t afford the cost of a system that’s fast enough, with a printer and everything else you need. And one of the things that’s really sad is that teachers and educators lack Internet access, and their schools are missing out. Hopefully all that will change.”

Ericsson is a recruiter for GSFC; she has applied to NASA’s astronaut program but has thus far been unable to participate due to an asthma condition and surgical repair of both knees. She has taught at Howard University’s Department of Mechanical Engineering and is an adjunct professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Mathematics at Bowie State University in Maryland, where she was hired to improve the engineering curriculum. She created two new courses for freshmen and sophomores at Bowie. Should she fulfill her goal of becoming a professor at Howard University, Ericsson hopes to create and chair an aerospace department. She is a member of a number of organizations, including the American Astronautical Society, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, the Society of Women Engineers, and Sigma Xi. She also participates in many community-outreach programs and has visited the White House for meetings on issues related to science, engineering, and technology.

Later in her career, Ericsson worked on developing instruments to stabilize and manage the orientation of spacecrafts. One such project in which she participated was the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which launched in 2009. In 2017, she was named new business lead (NBL) for the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Instrument Systems and Technology Division. In that position, she worked with small businesses and universities to solve strategic challenges faced by government agencies.

In recognition of her contributions, Ericsson has received the Women in Science and Engineering (WISE) Award (1997), which recognizes the best female engineer in the federal government; the NASA Goddard's Washington Award (2016); the National Society of Black Physicists Honor Award (2019); and was named by NASA’s African American Awards Committee as one of GSFC’s outstanding African Americans in 1998. In 2022, Ericsson was awarded the Ralph Coates Roe Medal from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers in recognition of her promotion of careers in (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) to minority and underrepresented communities.

Ericsson's many hobbies include reading, sports, woodworking, sewing, and baking. She lives in Washington, DC.

In 2023, President Joe Biden nominated her for the position of assistant secretary of defense for science and technology. Her nomination was approved in early 2024. In this capacity, Ericsson oversees science and technology issues for the Department of Defense.

Bibliography

"Aprille J. Ericsson." Department of Defense, www.defense.gov/About/Biographies/Biography/Article/3720697/aprille-ericsson/. Accessed 24 June 2024.

“Dr. Aprille J. Ericsson.” National Center for Earth and Space Science Education, Sept. 2007, journeythroughtheuniverse.org/downloads/Researchers/Bio-Ericsson.pdf. Accessed 24 June 2024.

Evans, Jessica. “NASA Engineer Receives Ralph Coats Roe Medal for Education, Mentorship.” NASA, 4 Feb. 2022, www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2022/nasa-engineer-receives-ralph-coats-roe-medal-for-education-mentorship. Accessed 24 June 2024.