Before he was a mechanical engineer, Ryan Matthiessen ’21 ’23G was a behavioral neuroscientist.
“I've always enjoyed math, but I’ve also liked understanding more about what drives a person to do better, to act better, and to learn,” says Matthiessen, who earned his bachelor’s degree in Lehigh’s College of Arts and Sciences last year. “I’ve always tried to apply what I was learning in classes to my own life, so I thought neuroscience was a very applicable degree.”
Matthiessen’s personal drive to learn didn’t stop at graduation. Today, he’s halfway through his graduate studies in the P.C. Rossin College of Engineering and Applied Science, where he’s been able to cross disciplines and explore another area of interest: aerospace.
“If you really want to extend the human reach outside of Earth, you're going to need astronauts,” he says. “I think my interest in human behavior and what makes somebody do something risky like creating a new colony on a different planet is a perfect way to merge my interest in the human brain and body with mechanical engineering.”
Matthiessen, who minored in computer science as an undergraduate, is following the interdisciplinary master’s degree track offered by the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Mechanics to bridge his prior educational experience and future career goals.
The Master of Science in Interdisciplinary Engineering option focuses on core curriculum topics (controls and dynamics, fluid mechanics, mathematical methods, mechanics of materials, and thermo-heat transfer), while offering students the flexibility to concentrate in innovative and nascent areas, such as aerospace, computational mechanics, energy, robotics and automation, management science and engineering, machine learning and data mining, and environmental policy. Students also may design their own concentrations to suit their specific interests and goals.
“The faculty and staff are always willing to have meaningful conversations,” says Matthiessen. “The rigor and expectations at Lehigh are exactly what I needed to shape my mind and problem‐solving skills. It pushes me to continually expand my knowledge.”
This spring, Matthiessen took a heat and mass transfer class, which helped him understand the concepts behind how heat and matter move—concepts that have aerospace applications, such as rocket propulsion.
“I also took a robotics class,” he says. “And next semester, I’ll be taking a manufacturing class, which will be good for understanding fabrication techniques.”
What he learns in those classes will come in handy as he works on a personal design project that will get his feet wet working with machines.
“I'm trying to design an aerospace glider,” Matthiessen says. “I created one in the 3D CAD, and now I'm trying to figure out how I can fabricate a working prototype.”
Though Matthiessen isn't sure if his glider will turn into a thesis project, he’s excited about the possibilities for melding theory and practice that come with it.
“The glider will be something you could hold in one hand and throw,” Matthiessen says. “I could put a few sensors on it to measure velocities and acceleration, so I could really understand what forces might act upon something that's in flight—real measurements in real conditions, not something you see in a textbook.”
Matthiessen says he has an open mind as he considers his next steps after completing his master’s degree in 2023. He’s leaning toward a focus on propulsion, and he says he believes that advancements in fusion energy will help further the possibilities for long-term space travel outside of our solar system.
“The universe is so vast,” Matthiessen says. “I think that if we get the opportunity to explore beyond where we're currently confined, we'll be able to find something we haven’t seen before, and I'm excited for that.”
—Steve Neumann is a freelance contributor to the P.C. Rossin College of Engineering and Applied Science
