Aerospace engineer shares how co-op helped her discover her path

The “College Matters. Alma Matters.” Podcast interviewed University of Cincinnati aerospace engineering Ph.D. candidate Lynn Pickering earlier this month. In the episode she discusses her undergraduate experience at UC, the importance of co-op and her research of fuzzy logic.

Pickering shared there was one thing that made UC stand out against the rest.

“The big thing for me was UC’s co-op program," she said. “If I hadn’t had that, I wouldn’t have known that maybe aerospace wasn’t the right thing for me and I would’ve had to work somewhere for years to figure that out."

The co-op program at UC is ranked No. 4 in the nation. Pickering shared that through her co-op experiences, she realized she had interests outside of aerospace engineering and discovered her passion for fuzzy logic, AI and machine learning.

Two years into her undergraduate career at UC, she connected with aerospace engineering professor Kelly Cohen, who introduced her to fuzzy logic. Fuzzy logic focuses on machine learning that tries to mimic human reasoning, allowing the truth of variables to range between zero and one.

Pickering also shared that having work experience in the engineering field as an undergraduate gives UC students an advantage compared to schools that may not require co-ops.

“It’s scary to do interviews and stuff, but doing it as a freshman, it’s a huge advantage over a lot of other students,” she said.

Listen to the full episode: Lynn Pickering of the University of Cincinnati: aerospace engineering, fuzzy logic and Fulbright research scholar.