Congratualtions to an Outstanding Tehachapi Resident

During the 2016 NASA Honor Awards at Armstrong Flight Research Center Cynthia J. Bixby, Chief of Engineering and Integration branch at NASA was presented with an Outstanding Leadership Medal for providing exceptional leadership to the Systems Engineering Branch and setting a great example for NASA's engineering staff.

Earlier in her NASA career she was acting deputy and then acting chief of the Flight Systems branch. She acted as chief systems engineer on the Unmanned Aerial Systems in the National Air Space, or UAS in the NAS project, which is researching how to introduce drones into the NAS.

She began her civil service career at NASA Armstrong in 2006 as a flight systems engineer and quickly became deputy lead engineer in the Flight Test Office. She was both deputy lead engineer and systems engineer lead for the Orion crew capsule pad abort test that was successfully performed in 2010. Prior to 2006, Bixby worked for Spiral, Inc., overseeing system integration and testing of a suite of hardware and software designed to enable research of intelligent flight control for a joint project with the Air Force using its C-17 testbed aircraft. She also managed a flight demonstration team to evaluate collision avoidance systems necessary for the UAS NAS.

Humbly Bixby says, "In 2006, I became a NASA civil servant. I bought a house and settled in for the long haul – no more six years and out for me. I spend my days helping really intelligent people make smart decisions and, occasionally, making a little aerospace history."