64 ISE Magazine | www.iise.org/ISEmagazine

What challenges did you face in your aviation career?

I’m a lile bit vertically challenged. I do hold the distinction of being the

smallest astronaut ever. I think I’ll hold that title as they recently changed the

stature requirement to 62 inches in this latest selection in 2021. I was very

fortunate things changed at just the right time. When I was just a few months

from graduating at Ohio State University, they changed from a 5-foot-4 stature

requirement for all the military services for pilots to metric measurements.

at’s the rst time I heard the term anthropometry. It is a recognition that

stature has very lile to do with operating an aircra or spacecra. ... at

answers why I picked the Army of all the services because I wanted to be a

pilot, I wanted to y helicopters, and I was too short for all the other services.

Around the same time I graduated in 1980 from Ohio State, in 1978 they

picked the rst female astronauts ever for the shule program. In recognition

of that, they had to change the anthropometric requirements for the astronaut

corps.

But even though the selection criteria changed over time, the design of the

equipment that astronauts interfaced with didn’t change, and most of that

equipment was built on military specications. If you look at legacy equipment

that was built and designed in the 1970s, maybe even early 1980s, that was

primarily based on military male anthropometry. As we know, females are not

just lile scale versions of their male counterparts; they have very dierent

anthropometry and very dierent requirements. ... I was an instructor pilot

and I had quite a few people y with me who were skeptical could I control the

aircra with the hydraulics o because the male pilots were just brute-forcing

controllers. I learned to nesse the aircra down and to apply less force.

How did your experience in aviation connect with ergonomics?

I spent thousands of hours in simulators learning how to control situations,

learning how to recongure the aircra and spacecra in an emergency

situation. And yet there are certain circumstances that I could get in – for

example, becoming depressurized because the pressurized suit does not t

me well – that despite the fact that I have all the knowledge and skills I need

to perform that role, my performance might be impeded because of the poor

t in the safety equipment. I prided myself on knowing everything I could

about every system that I ever ew, whether it be a helicopter, an airplane, a

jet or a spacecra. I did that so that I could control the situation and hopefully

have a good outcome when we had o-nominal emergency situations. But if

my functionality is impeded because the systems I’m interfacing aren’t really

designed for me, that’s a disservice not only to me but my fellow crew members

as well.

Describe the research you’re doing at Texas A&M.

I’m a faculty member and my research area is spacecra occupant protection.

We used to use anthropomorphic test dummies like using car crash testing

and then computational models of those dummies, and expose them to the

forces you might be exposed to during a landing sequence. Now we’re using

a body model that responds much more like a human than a metallic dummy.

We’re looking at that particularly with respect to small females – neck injuries,

head injuries, lower lumbar injuries as you’re exposed to these forces of rapid

acceleration during the landing sequence.

You know takeos are optional, landings are not, and all landings in a

capsule are a dynamic event. Coming in on the shules was like coming in on

With Nancy Currie-Gregg

Nancy Currie-Gregg is deputy director and chief

technology ocer at Texas A&M University’s Bush

Combat Development Complex, where she is

responsible for national defense research and

development projects in integrated hypersonics and

integrated network autonomy. She is a former NASA

astronaut who ﬂew four space shuttle missions from

1993-2002 with more than 1,000 hours in space. She

later served in senior engineering positions at NASA

and led the Space Shuttle Program Safety and Mission

Assurance Oce. She is a retired U.S. Army colonel,

a Master Army Aviator and a member of the U.S.

Senior Executive Service with 35 years of government

and military experience. She is the holder of the Don

Lummus ’58 Professorship of Practice in Engineering

with appointments in the departments of industrial

and systems engineering and aerospace engineering.

Currie-Gregg served as a keynote speaker at the

2022 Applied Ergonomics Conference in Orlando,

Florida, where she discussed her career in space and

ergonomics. She shared her thoughts in a Problem

Solved Podcast Break at the conference, which can be

heard at link.iise.org/aec2022_currie-gregg. Here are

excerpts from that conversation.

What’s

Your

Story?

March 2023 | ISE Magazine 65

an airline. When you come in on a capsule, you denitely know you

have landed and those forces are being transmied to the human

body. How do we reduce that? We can’t be injuring people on what

is a nominal event. If I told you every time you pulled your car into

the garage you were going to crash, that would not be acceptable.

In my other role, I’m the chief technology ocer at the Bush

Combat Development Complex. We’re doing really exciting

applied research for defense-related issues and we specialize in

integrated hypersonics, rapid design of hypersonic vehicles. We

look at an integrated network of autonomous vehicles that will

do things so we don’t have to expose humans to undue harm –

whether it’s searching for mines, going out to acquire intelligence

by using autonomous ground and air vehicles, we can expose

humans to less of a risk.

Part of our philosophy is called agile technology development;

our moo is “Fail early, fail fast” – discover the problems early. Do

our systems properly accommodate human operators OK, not just

physically but cognitively as well? You’ve got all the sensor data

coming in ... as we know we can cognitively overload people when

we do that and thereby negatively aect performance.

What are your thoughts regarding the Artemis

program returning to the moon?

I am super excited about Artemis. When I was selected as an astro-

naut, President (George H. W.) Bush said “We’re going back to the

moon and on to Mars,” and our class patch had the moon and Mars

on it, and we thought “is is great, we’re the ones.” Of course, we

weren’t. We’ve kind of gone in ts and starts but now we’re going

back to the moon and we’re going on to Mars. I couldn’t be more

excited because we’re destined to explore; it’s embedded in our na-

ture to explore beyond our boundaries and to explore beyond the

connes of where we’ve been for decades now in low earth orbit.

To go back to the moon and ultimately on Mars and truly start to

explore the universe is super exciting.

– Interview by Keith Albertson

Nancy Currie-Gregg chats with an attendee following her keynote

speech at the 2022 Applied Ergonomics Conference.

Inspire the Future

of Industrial and

Systems Engineering

We know you want the best employees

– the ones who reach for the stars and

give back to others.

Your donaon to the IISE Scholarship

Fund ($90,000+ bestowed last year)

helps students focus on what’s

important – their studies and their

research that will help your

organizaon in the future.

Donate today:

www.iise.org/PlannedGiving

I am very

grateful and honored to

be the recipient of the

Gilbreth Memorial

Fellowship. is award arms my

academic performance and service in

IISE, supports my Ph.D. study and

encourages me to improve myself

further. I will pursue a career in the IE

domain and continuously contribute to

our community in the future.

- Yinan Wang, Ph.D., Assistant Professor

Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute