Rising Star Awards: Women in Engineering Aerospace Winner Heather Cummings

Heather Cummings, a 27-year old senior flight controls and autonomy engineer at Sikorsky, is the winner of the Aerospace/Defense category for SAE Media Group's inaugural Women in Engineering: Rising Star Awards program. In addition to her role developing flight control software and improving Sikorsky's Innovations department's processes for software and model-based systems engineering, she is also a pilot. Among her career accomplishments at Sikorsky include leading the flight controls software development and flight testing program on a technology demonstrator aircraft for autonomy and reduced crew operations. The project involved Heather dividing up sub-tasks for the project and working with each individual on the team to mentor them on the engineering skills necessary for completion. She also served as the onboard flight test engineer for the project. One of her career goals is to serve as the lead engineer on new technologies that form the next generation of semi and fully autonomous aircraft.

In addition to her role as a lead flight controls engineer, she is a volunteer in Connecticut's Tango Flight program, where she serves as a mentor for high school students. The Tango Flight program, hosted by Three Wing Aviation and First Aviation Services Inc., aims to inspire the next generation of engineers, pilots, aviation mechanics and technicians through hands on learning and mentoring including helping the students build an FAA-certified VANS RV-12 aircraft. Following her receipt of the Rising Star award, Aerospace and Defense Technology (ADT) caught up with Cummings to discuss her career and how the number of women working in aerospace engineering is growing.