Utah Engineers Journal 2021 Issue

31 Engineer of the Year Nominee Jessica Widrick Northrop Grumman Nominated by AIAA Jessica Widrick is an accomplished engineer who has spent the past 15 years working with large solid rocket motors for Northrop Grumman in Utah as a design engineer in the metal structures, joints, and seals group and as the design lead and technical expert responsible for metal hardware components, seals, and overall joint performance. She started her career working on the shuttle program with the reusable solid rocket motors and has since worked on government, commercial, and industry entities for both development and production programs. Jessica interacts and coordinates with multiple manufacturing centers and Design Engineers to ensure successful handling, manufacture, and assembly of metal hardware and joints. Jessica not only frequently works with different disciplines but also maintains a comprehensive knowledge of the production processes to ensure a successful design including an understanding of rocket motor ballistics, fluid mechanics, heat transfer, thermochemistry, and structures. Jessica is an expert of various seal material’s capability, joint environmental conditions, potential changes during operation, seal integrity verification, and how to conceptualize and bound failure modes. Jessica maintains and develops engineering design standards within her discipline and teaches others good design practice by creating standards to help train others and create design process consistency. Achievements include: Jessica Widrick • B.S. in Aerospace Engineering, the University of Tennessee, Knoxville • Sr. principal structural engineer, August 2007-Present • System safety engineer, June 2006-August 2007 • Career highlights include the following: • She spent 15 years working with large solid rocket motors. • She worked on a shuttle program with reusable solid rocket motors. • She interacts and coordinates with multiple manufacturing centers. • She maintains and develops engineering design standards. • She received a Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems and Propulsion Systems Achievement award, 2019. utahengineerscouncil.org