 Hi, I'm Kate Young, and you're listening to This Is Purdue, the official podcast for Purdue University. As a Purdue alum and Indiana native, I know firsthand about the family of students and professors who are in it together, persistently pursuing and relentlessly rethinking. Who are the next game changers, difference makers, ceiling breakers, innovators? Who are these Boilermakers? Join me as we feature students, faculty and alumni taking small steps toward their giant leaps and inspiring others to do the same. Even nationally, there's a strong connection between space and Purdue, be it the alumni, astronauts, the strong history we have together, the whole ethos of Boilermakers is built on hard work. In this episode of This Is Purdue, we're talking to a Boilermaker who recently took his next giant leap at none other than the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, or as most people call it, NASA. Roanock DeVay graduated from Purdue in 2014 with his Bachelors of Science from the School of Aeronautics and Astronautics. He was recently selected as a NASA Flight Director. I mean, NASA Flight Director, it just sounds impressive, right? And it truly is. In this year's class of 2022, Roanock is one of just seven Flight Directors selected by NASA. And there have only been 108 Flight Directors within the agency since the position was formed in 1958. So let's dive into this episode with Roanock and learn more about what exactly a NASA Flight Director does and how they are selected. We're so happy to have you on the official University podcast. We always love talking to NASA Boilermakers. So congrats on your latest role. Tell us a little bit about what being a Flight Director at NASA entails and how you kind of worked your way up to get this role. Well, thank you. I obviously appreciate talking to anyone from Purdue. Happy to be here and talk to you today. The Flight Director for Human Spaceflight is the leader of the team, the conductor of the orchestra, if you will, of the NASA Human Spaceflight mission. So right now there's a Flight Director in the Mission Control Center leading their team for the International Space Station, along with our international counterparts all around the world. They help the team make decisions. They help explain or accept the risk of doing things that we may do in making sure the crew stays safe, the vehicle stays safe, and that we're continually accomplishing our mission objectives up in orbit. So right now that's for the International Space Station. Obviously, I'm sure you've heard of the Artemis program. The new program we're working on to return the first female and the first person of color to the moon and stay there sustainably. And that involves also building an international space station around the moon as well. So again, all these programs have Flight Directors associated with them that when they're not on console are helping build those teams, helping build the operations behind them. What kind of procedures are we going to have? What kind of rules are we going to operate these vehicles by? And that's how a lot of the folks in the office spend their days, is in meetings and generating all these operational products and means of operation so that when we get to the Control Center that everyone's on the same page and we're ready to go accomplish the mission. If you've ever seen the movie Apollo 13, you'll remember Ed Harris played real-life NASA Flight Director Gene Krantz, who was overseeing mission control during the Apollo 13 crewed moon landing mission. When things went wrong, the Flight Director, in this case Gene Krantz, led the team to come up with a solution to save the Apollo 13 crew. So you may think of Flight Directors as guiding their crews through Houston we've had a problem situations, and that is the case. But really overall, they're responsible for the success of a mission. Flight Directors lead teams of flight controllers, research and engineering experts, and support personnel around the world, making the real-time decisions critical to keeping NASA astronauts safe in space. I mentioned previously that NASA selected its first Flight Director back in 1958. That person was Christopher C. Kraft, Jr., the namesake of the Mission Control Center. Chris Kraft was on duty during America's first crewed spaceflight, first crewed orbital flight, and first spacewalk. And speaking of this legendary NASA engineer, Ronak tells us how a book written by Chris in 2001 called Flight My Life in Mission Control inspired and propelled him to his path to working at NASA. I actually stumbled upon a book by Dr. Chris Kraft called Go Flight. Chris Kraft is really the architect of human spaceflight operations. He was Flight Director number one. So him and his team really built how we work today. And really a lot of what we do today is still built on those foundations. We still use a lot of the concepts they came up with today. From that time, I knew that I wanted to work in human spaceflight operations and becoming a Flight Director and leading that team is, in my opinion, really a pinnacle of that. And yeah, it was something I definitely wanted to do. It's also one of those jobs that you can't be upset about not getting. Like you said, there's including our class will be 108 total, right? So it was definitely something that was aspirational and it was awesome to get into the co-op program, the pathways internship program and see how operations worked and really become embedded in that and starting full-time in that. And obviously was able to work through that, working on different programs and different console positions to get to where I am today. As Ronak just mentioned, being selected as a Flight Director, one of 108 in the past 65 years took incredible persistence. In fact, before he was selected back in 2019, he was being interviewed for an article for Purdue's AAE's Young Professionals Advisory Council. During that interview, he said, quote, I think it would be incredible to get to that point of becoming a Flight Director. It's definitely a hard thing to get into. I think getting to a Flight Director position is a personal goal of mine. And now, three years later, here he is. So how do you get selected as a Flight Director? Many have served as a Flight Controller in Mission Control at NASA before becoming a Flight Director, just like Ronak did. But that's not a prerequisite to apply. You could have prior experience from the military or other spaceflight organizations as this role requires a background of professional experience in high-stress environments and fast-paced decision-making. Ronak walks us through what NASA looks for when it comes to selecting a Flight Director. I think there's definitely different paths. Everyone in the office has taken a different path to get there. And even now, our most recent class, my class, has two people that actually did not grow up at JSC, which almost everyone else in the Flight Director office has. So I'd say it's definitely passionate people who are working in operational fields, working with high-level decision-making, and working through operations, if you will, for a better word, of not just building things, but how do you go make them work? How do they break? How do you fix them when they break? In terms of getting this job, it's like another government application, if you will. The specifics of the interview and what goes along with those things, I'm actually not allowed to talk about because of the nature of the job. But I mean, they're testing you and having conversations about how you would deal in situations like that. Now, imagine receiving the news that NASA has selected you as a Flight Director. Ronax shares his reaction with us, and, well, let's just say he should not have ignored this particular phone call. How did they tell you? Is it a big announcement? Walk us through what you were feeling when you found out that you became a Flight Director. So we actually found out before the announcement was made, and we couldn't tell anyone. I was actually working a part of the Artemis mission, one of the wet dress rehearsals, and I got a phone call. It was actually a FaceTime call that I hung up on multiple times because it was numbers I didn't know, or didn't know. So I thought it was some sort of new spam call, and I finally got a text message from the chief of the office. It was like, hey, you need to pick up this phone call. So I was actually still in the control center at that time, so I was like hidden in a corner, picking up, talking to them, and they finally asked me where I was. I was like, oh, I'm in the break room. They're like, you should go to your car. I finally walked outside and had the rest of the conversation with them in the car. So it was definitely a very surprising phone call to get on a Sunday afternoon. Wow, that's amazing. So how long did you have to keep it from your friends and family? We were allowed to tell some close family, but yeah, it was probably a month or so before the public announcement happened. So there was a good amount of time that we could not tell everyone. Purdue University has a rich legacy with NASA. Many people across the world know the strong ties between Purdue and space, thanks to one of Purdue's most famous alumni, Neil Armstrong, the first person to walk on the moon. And of course, many Boilermakers work for NASA, including several flight directors past and present. Wayne Hale, who received his Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Purdue in 1978, served as a NASA Flight Director from 1988 to 2003. Gary Horlacher was selected as a NASA Flight Director in 2008. He graduated from Purdue in 1989 with a degree in Systems Engineering through Interdisciplinary Engineering. And in 2018, NASA selected not one but two Purdue alums to be part of their class of 2018 Flight Directors, Allison Bullinger and Marco Flores. Allison began her career at NASA as an intern in 2001. She earned her bachelor's degree in Aerospace Engineering from Purdue in 2004. And Marco earned his master's degree in Aeronautics and Astronautics from Purdue in 2015. I asked Bronoch if he ever asked for any advice from these Purdue alums during his pursuit of becoming a Flight Director. You know, I've definitely spoken to all of them. I don't know if I talked to them specifically in terms of the interview process or when I applied. Gary, who is one of the Purdue Flight Directors, has actually moved on to a newer position. But my first internship, they offer Russian classes here on site at JFC to help work with our international partners. And we were in the same Russian class. So we made our introduction very early on. So that it's been a running joke with us of, hey, well, good thing we took that Russian class together. Allison and I actually are also part of a program that JFC has started recently called University Envoy. So we are actually in contact with a lot of the colleges and schools at Purdue. Working with them is kind of the ambassador to Purdue from JFC, if you will. So yeah, I've definitely worked with them and it's a pretty tight group of folks in the office. So though not through the interview process, I've definitely gotten a lot of feedback and tidbits of wisdom from all of them. We love to hear it. So Roanaut grew up in Saqqaqis, New Jersey, and I had a feeling that Purdue's ties to the space industry in NASA were a huge factor in his decision to attend a school 755 miles from home. Did you seek out this school because of the cradle of astronauts or what made you want to come to Purdue? That was definitely a part of it. After my junior year, I went to a, I think it was like a one week engineering seminar kind of thing that Purdue did. I had not been to the Midwest prior to that point, but the strong connection with NASA and that experience was definitely what drove me to go into school 13 hours away from home instead of two hours away from home. So yeah, I would say absolutely the NASA connection was a huge part of that. Was it a culture shock to get to West Lafayette? What were you thinking kind of that first semester? Yeah, it was. So I grew up in New Jersey right outside of New York City and we could go to the corner of my block right now. I'm actually in New Jersey and you can see the Empire State Building. So things felt a lot slower when I got to West Lafayette. And a lot of the drive through Western Ohio and Eastern Indiana all the way up to West Lafayette was very different than what I'm used to driving through. Well at Purdue, Roanoke was part of the Pathways Intern Program, also known as the Co-op Program, which allows students to alternate semesters between studying at Purdue and working in industries of their choice. This gives students both an academic foundation and real world work experience. And these co-ops are especially unique within NASA because students can work within different divisions so they can find the right fit. Roanoke describes his experience with the Pathways Intern Program, which he had the opportunity to work in for four years. The official U.S. government program is the Pathways Internship Program was colloquially known as the Co-op Program. And obviously at Purdue, you guys have the Office of Professional Practice that kind of helps coordinate that from the university side. Those tours that I did were all during my undergraduate work at Purdue and each of those was nice because colleges, and this is something I like to tell people in general, right? College is a time where you get to explore new things for sake of learning where you might not get to just jump from thing to thing once you become a real adult. So I knew coming in that I wanted to be in the operations world so I tried to go as to as many different operational disciplines as I could to learn what they did and how they worked and what their culture was to kind of to get a broad view of how the whole organization work. So that was three of my tours were in different operational organizations. One of those was also in an engineering organization to see how they do business. What are they working on? And at that point, it was really more advanced projects type stuff. So really research and development, prototyping and getting hands on hardware. So it was definitely great experiences learning about different parts of the center and how different organizations work at the thing. And using that now to my benefit right of knowing it. Hey, if I'm going to this person or this group or this organization, I know what they're worried about what they're thinking about and how to have a conversation with them and have that be beneficial. Did that help you when you first started your job at NASA to know which fields you enjoyed best and to get in there? Absolutely. I think knowing what you like best and then also knowing who to talk to the way the operations world works is everyone owns a little piece of the spacecraft, if you will, a different subsystem and a lot of those things work together. And your group may not always have the final answer. So knowing who, oh, I can go talk to this person and this group and we already have a relationship that is definitely a huge benefit. When you got to Purdue, were you immediately just like, I know I want to work at NASA. This is what I want to do with life. Yeah, I was all in. So how did Ronox time at Purdue within the School of Aeronautics and Astronautics prepare him for his career in NASA? Something that Purdue, especially the engineering school does really well is you, by virtue of the way the classes are taught or just the course as you take, you learn how to learn and you learn how to learn quickly. There's a lot of content that you pick up rapidly and in that you start to learn what's important and how to parse out what is important. And that's something that I definitely carry with me today of being able to come up to a new problem or a new system or new rocket, right? And pick out what's important to me. Why do I care about those things and how do I use that to my benefit in making decisions about that vehicle? Or where do we think this will break right away or how do we fix that when it breaks? So the learning how to learn thing was definitely my biggest takeaway. And speaking of Purdue giving Ronox the tools needed to solve problems and overcome challenges in a fast paced environment, he shares a situation he worked through at NASA as a flight controller after a test flight didn't go as planned. I think that most folks in any type of career will go through different types of problems, be it personnel or technical or operational. I think the unique problems we have here, you are put in positions where you are very quickly given the responsibility to make decisions about things that may sink a billion dollar spacecraft or endanger people's lives. An example of maybe not endanger people's lives, but a few years ago, we flew the first Boeing Operate Orbital Flight Test of the Boeing Starliner vehicle. I was on that team as a propulsion flight controller. I'll spare you the gory details, but very quickly into that test flight, things started to not go as we expected them to. I was handed over a vehicle and we did not know where we were going to go. We didn't know when we were going to come home and we really didn't know all of the capability we had at that point in the propulsion system that I was working on. So I was kind of given a blank slate with some rough direction and say, all right, we'll just do what we think is best and then we'll come pick it up on the other side and keep pressing down that plan. So I was put into a position where you kind of have a pretty great space that you're working when in a context where you never thought you'd really be. So I was really proud of that team and us pulling together a plan and being able to test the system and off an orbit to stay there a few days and then safely bring that spacecraft home to the desert out in New Mexico. After more than a decade of working at NASA, remember he started his career there in 2011 in the Pathways Intern Program. Ronak shared some advice for anyone thinking about a career in the space industry. I think NASA or really anything in the space industry right that it's a really small though growing industry and there's a lot of people that know each other. I think that if you're passionate that passion shows so just go talk to people have conversations meet people who are in the industry and there's obviously, especially in these fields, there's an expectation that you know what you're doing and you have a head start there that we're going to Purdue and going to get great program like that. We know that technically all those skills are going to be there. So I'd say definitely making connections and talking to folks when they come on campus. We have a lot of great speakers from the industry that come to campus and. Give talks either at the seminar level or even bigger conversations that they have at different lecture halls and all that kind of thing. So I'd say definitely having having those conversations and talking to people is a great thing to do has advice to all of our student listeners out there. I think one of the ones I kind of alluded to earlier college is a time where you really have the ability to go do different things. Be it study abroad doing internship in a different state, a different country. Go learn in Europe. There's a lot out there that you don't necessarily always get the ability to go do once you're out in a job and working. Yeah, there's definitely jobs that afford you that, but this is a time where you you have all of that your fingertips and you should definitely go experience those things, especially if it's things you haven't done before. I think that's something that's really important. And speaking of Boilermaker students, I asked Roanock to reflect on his time at Purdue. He shares more about his favorite professor. The Air Department has some incredible professors, not just for their acumen and expertise in the fields that they work in that they're literally worldwide leaders in, but are incredible educators. The name that comes to mind is Professor Kathleen Howell is one of the astrodynamics professors and is quite literally a worldwide expert in what she does and can remember students by name in classes. That she has multiple sessions of hundreds of students this semester and know how they're actually doing in their classes. It was something I appreciated a lot right of a professor at a big university where you don't necessarily expect people to know that level of their students. So it was probably one of the hardest sets of classes I've ever taken. But you definitely learn a lot. You know that she is trying to get you to learn the first principles of how these things work and not just get through the course. As for the other memories during his time at Purdue, it wasn't just all about the rigorous academics. Roanock is a huge Purdue athletics fan and was part of the paint crew at our beloved Mackey arena. I am a big basketball fan. My sophomore year, I was actually part of the paint crew advisory board and that was the year we had Game Day show up. So doing the whole camp out thing and being able to show up at Mackey at 6 30 in the morning and get on the court level and be on national TV. That was definitely a really exciting and fun experience. And the first few years there, we had a lot of I was a big sports. I'm a big sports person. So we had a lot of fun sports memories of storming the field against Ohio State in 2009. That same year, I think the women's volleyball team also beat a number one rated Penn State. There was a lot of fun. I had there with friends and going to all these sporting events and seeing us take down some of the competition in the big town. You got to check out. We've done interviews with coach painter and coach from coach. Our interview with Tim's coming out this fall. So if you're a sports fan, you got to check them out. I will have to check those out as for Roanock's favorite Purdue traditions. He says the paint crew is right up there on his list. I think they've changed the process a little bit, but there's something to be said about people who are crazy enough to go camp in 10 degree weather to get seats to a basketball game. But, but I love the little whether they're real or not idiosyncratic myths we have of walking under the bell tower and buildings having difference of codes. But those are all fun to tell folks when you bring them to campus. I asked Roanock how it feels to be a Boilermaker at NASA. Why do you think Purdue is unique? Why are you proud to walk into NASA and say I'm a Boilermaker? So JC, it's easy because we there's like a third of the campuses for people. I think even nationally, there's a strong connection between space and Purdue who be it through just the alumni astronauts, just the strong history we have together. Roanock ends with a powerful story on how the Boilermaker spirit is represented every day within NASA. What would you say? You know, you talked about athletics and your love for sports with Purdue. What does that Boilermaker spirit and that community mean to you? The whole ethos of Boilermakers is built on hard work. And there's a story that happened in real life, something we talk about in operations a lot. The Apollo 1 fire, which had to Purdue astronauts on it, after that accident, the flight director, Gene Kranz, brought all the operations team into a conference room. And to cut the speech short, he basically said that everyone's going to go right tough and competent on their chalkboards and that's what we're going to live by. So those are foundations that we still work to today in flight operations. And we've added to them over the course of time with more words that define our ethos. But it's something that I really work to and live to today. I'd say it's very in line with the Boilermaker spirit. The whole ethos of Boilermakers is built on hard work. I just love that quote. Roanock reminds us that there's a year long training process when it comes to becoming certified as a NASA flight director. But after that, what's his next giant leap? Bringing those boots back to the moon or maybe putting new ones on Mars is definitely something I'd love to be a part of. We can't thank Roanock enough for joining us on this podcast, especially as he was enjoying a well-deserved vacation at the time of this interview. I'll just say I'm happy to be a Purdue grad and proud of the traditions and the excellence that the school provides. And it was an amazing time, the five years I spent there. If you'd like to listen to another This Is Purdue episode that highlights a Boilermaker from NASA, check out episode 48 with NASA's space suit engineer Amy Ross. You can listen to our episodes anywhere you get your podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or even on YouTube. Head over to youtube.com slash Purdue. Thanks for listening to This Is Purdue. For more information on this episode, visit our website at purdue.edu slash podcast. There you can head over to your favorite podcast app to subscribe and leave us a review. And as always, Boiler up.