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Karen Gundy-Burlet: One of the big things in my life that really changed
a lot of things for me was becoming type-1 diabetic.
One night, I'm walking down the hallway and I can't even walk straight.
Blood sugar's a thousand and lucky I lived to the next day sort of thing.
But I tell you, that shaped my life in a big way.
Because there I went from, you know, being blissfully unaware
to having to control a major bodily function by myself, every day.
It was one of those things, where I could have let it stop me, a lot of people just give up.
But no, that's another one of those life lessons.
You learn about it, you deal with it, you control it and you move on
to do the rest of the things in your life.
My name is Karen Gundy-Burlet.
I'm a research scientist.
And I work at NASA.
My Uncle Floyd started a little airline between Paso Robles and Santa Cruz
and basically, it was to distribute the apples
from the family ranch in Washington down into the area here.
But beyond just the airline, he also did barnstorming.
I grew up with all of these wonderful pictures and stories of all of his exploits
and it did make me very aware of aviation.
I was born in San Jose, California. I've lived in the same house all my life.
I went to UC-Berkeley for my undergraduate degree
and then to Stanford for my Master's and PhD degrees.
Undergraduate degree was in mechanical engineering
and Master's and PhD in aeronautical engineering.
My high school biology teacher knew Hans Mark, who was the Center Director
at the time and so she knew that there was programs for high school students.
It was one of those amazing interviews.
Here I am, just a high school junior and talking about differential equations
and how they approximate them and just...it was great.
So I...that was my first experience at NASA, with that interview and I just...
from there on, I worked one day a week at NASA, during the school year
and I was paired off with a series of different mentors;
wonderful research scientists who taught me so much.
Right now, I'm working on the Lunar Atmospheric Dust Environment Explorer.
It's a spacecraft mission. I'm the fight software quality engineer.
Being able to actually apply a lot of that background work I've done
in what happens in software systems and the interaction
between software systems and people, that interface and so, being able to use that
in order to create new ways of verifying flight software is just a fun job for me right now.
One of the things I've learned here is that, even though I'm a math and techie person,
communication is absolutely vital.
If you can't talk about what you're doing, it doesn't matter to the rest,
if you can't convey it, it's not of any use to anybody else.
I would advise somebody to not specialize too quickly, too early.
I mean...to really understand what's going on in math, to link it with your sciences
and learn how to communicate all of that.
Be an intern, figure out what you want to do with your life,
try a few different places, a few different companies.
Don't be afraid to test the waters out.
I've probably had five or six really critical mentors as I've moved through my career.
Starting out as a 16-year old and finding a series of scientists
who were helpful, challenging and each one of them I thank highly.
And I try to give back.
I bring on students all the time and try to pass on the knowledge
and the experience that was given to me
with new crops of students and other employees.
I think one of the most important things, when you're coming up young
and in a field like this, is not to be deterred by little things.
I mean, every little roadblock, find a way around it, go over it.
Don't...don't let yourself get stopped, because I've watched too many people
become dispirited because of a little thing.
And just...keep going.