UC professor inspires kids to explore aerospace engineering

Prashant Khare, assistant professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Cincinnati, shared his personal experience and offered advice to encourage kids’ interest in STEM during a video interview with the Cincinnati Museum Center’s STEM Girls virtual series.

Khare explained the basics of aerospace engineering, what it’s like to be an aerospace engineer and how he ended up in the field. He also offered some words of wisdom to young people interested in pursuing STEM careers.  

“Science enables you to understand nature and how things work, but the language that science speaks is math. So, they are interrelated. There is no science without math,” he said. “But don’t be afraid of math. Everyone can do it. It’s not magic. Everyone can learn it, there is no secret to it — it’s just learning.”

As a professor, Khare serves as a mentor to his graduate and undergraduate students and he knows firsthand the importance of mentors to a young student. He was inspired to go into engineering because of his quizzical nature, his scientist parents and a college professor that introduced him to aerospace.

“While I was interested in STEM, aerospace and space, it wasn’t just because of me, it was because of all the people in my life – my parents, mentors – that I am who I am,” Khare said in the video. 

Research in Khare’s UC lab will hopefully help people to eventually go farther and faster into explorations in the universe.

“In my lab, we study the fundamentals of what happens inside of a combustor that burns the fuel in a jet or rocket engine. If we can understand these processes better — what happens inside — we can probably design better engines in the future,” he said. 

In the video interview, Khare also highlighted UC’s 2019 Next Giant Leap celebration which marked several milestones, including the 90th year for UC’s Department of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics (the second oldest program in the country); 200 years since UC opened its doors to students; and the 50th anniversary of the moon landing. Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon, was an aerospace engineering professor at UC in the 1970s after leaving NASA.

STEM Girls is a free program aimed at all children ages 7-14 to learn more about the STEM field. The video series is one of many online programs the museum has offered throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Paula Lampley, director of Women in Engineering at the University of Cincinnati, was also recently interviewed in the series.