Tahani Amer discovered her natural passion and inclination for engineering while watching her father fixing his car’s engine as she sat inside her small Egyptian apartment. While her love of math created a clear path for a mechanical and aerospace engineering future, it was great teachers and her father that encouraged and guided Dr. Amer. In return, she spends a great deal of her time to inspire and challenge young women to reach their potential. Dr. Amer started working at NASA in the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) Branch. By working in this branch, she gained valuable experience and fulfilled her dream to work with scientists and researchers in solving real-life problems. She recalls, “It was a real privilege to work with state-of-the-art technology and with researchers who love their work.” Then, she landed an opportunity in one of NASA’s wind tunnels to conduct pressure and thermal sensitive paint experiments in support of the NASA’s aeronautical research efforts. This proved to be a valuable experience from both a theoretical and practical point of view. She has experienced the excitement of working with large CFD computer codes and climbing up the ceiling of a wind tunnel to install a velocity probe. Dr. Amer has invented and patented a system to measure the thermal conductivity of a thin film. This measurement is used in the thermal modeling of several techniques for determining boundary layer transition location on models being tested in wind tunnels. Dr. Amer holds a bachelor’s in mechanical engineering, a master’s in aerospace engineering, and a doctoral of engineering from Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia.                     

 from http://women.nasa.gov/tahani-amer/