Outstanding Young Mechanical Engineer
BSME, The University of Texas at Austin, 2008
MSME, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2012
Ashley Durand (née Browning) is an aerospace engineering leader designing rockets at Relativity Space, a launch vehicle startup in California. She is the Senior Manager of Avionics Integrated Design, which includes electronics mechanical packaging, structural hardware, wire harnessing, and instrumentation for the Terran R rocket.
She spent nearly 10 years at SpaceX where she managed crew interfaces avionics hardware development on the Dragon 2 spacecraft. She was responsible for the mechanical design, analysis, and test of the control panel and touchscreen displays, which are the primary astronaut user interfaces for the vehicle. She drove the control panel from a piece of cardboard with post-it notes to a team of engineers delivering flight hardware. Ashley also supported the Dragon 1 spacecraft trunk upgrade and helped quantify, develop, and deliver training as a technical training engineer.
Ashley joined SpaceX after graduating with her master’s degree in mechanical engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as a member of both the Mechanics of Solid Materials and Nanomechanics of Structural Biological Materials laboratories. She researched bio-inspired composites and helped develop flexible protective coatings inspired by nature for defense applications. She earned her undergraduate in mechanical engineering from the University of Texas at Austin, where she researched engineering design under Dr. Carolyn Seepersad in the Part, Process and Materials Design Lab and was active in Tau Beta Pi. She previously worked as a product design co-op at Apple.
When she’s not designing in aerospace aluminum, Ashley’s favorite materials are clay and textiles, a hobby she calls “spacecrafting” with her side project Altaire Design. She loves watching rocket launches with her husband James, a fellow Longhorn mechanical engineer and Disney Imagineer, and their daughter Violet. They live in Los Angeles with their cat.
