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Cecilia Aragon (M.S. '87 CS)

Shortly after completing her master's degree, Cecilia Aragon (M.S. '87 CS) earned her pilot's license, became an air show pilot, and was a two-time member of the U.S. Aerobatic Team. Now, she has returned to Berkeley after a 14-year hiatus from her studies to complete her doctoral degree in computer science, where her passions for flight and mathematics merge.

"It's so exciting being back in school," she says. "Berkeley is really at the forefront of this kind of work."

As a computer scientist in the computational sciences division at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Aragon's work involves the study of local wind shear and other airflow hazards in the search for ways to improve air travel safety. With more than 5,000 accident-free hours in flight, she may have a more personal investment in keeping the skies friendly.

"I have these two viewpoints that not many people have, and I want to use them to make a difference," Aragon says. "People involved in aviation tend to be very specialized. I've known 20-year veteran aircraft designers who have never been in the aircraft they were designing for."

Once painfully shy, late to ride a bike, and nervous about driving a car with a stick shift, Cecilia Aragon (M.S.'87 CS) is quite at home in her custom-built Sabre 320, which climbs at 4,500 feet per minute and has a roll rate of 420 degrees per second.

Aragon has developed a cockpit display system that displays invisible air currents to warn pilots of impending disturbances in the air. The system was incorporated into a high-fidelity rotorcraft simulator and tested by 16 U.S. Coast Guard and Navy pilots, with dramatic results: For hazardous landing approaches in highly turbulent conditions, the hazard indicator reduced the crash rate from 19 percent to 6.3 percent.

Perhaps the most dramatic thing about Aragon, however, is that she used to be deathly afraid of heights, a fear she aggressively conquered after a flight in a private plane over the beautiful San Francisco coastline. ("I was in heaven," she recalls.) Now she fearlessly executes air tricks like multiple snap rolls and tailslides.

"Mastering my fear gave me a feeling of confidence that has carried over to other parts of my life," Aragon says. "Let's face it. Compared to pointing the nose of an airplane straight at the ground and flying vertically down at 200 miles an hour, everything else in life seems easy."

Lab Notes is published online by the Marketing and Communications Office of the UC Berkeley College of Engineering. The Lab Notes mission is to illuminate groundbreaking research underway today at the College of Engineering that will dramatically change our lives tomorrow.

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