Susan Ying: program integration at Boeing's Phantom Works 

Susan Ying is executive program integrator for Boeing's Phantom Works R&D unit. Besides integrating programs, she attends key technology briefings, reviews critical programs, and coordinates the efforts of the twenty or so people who report directly to the president of Phantom Works. Through them, she's steering the efforts of 5,000 employees. 

She also coordinates communications with armed forces customers, research labs and suppliers. The overall mission is to manage the division's technology portfolio, including tracking the development of technology and intellectual property and eliminating duplication.

Ying was always interested in airplanes and flying. For years her father worked in Indonesia while the family lived in Taiwan, and Ying and her brother commuted the 1,000 miles between the two countries. She logged more miles as a kid than many of today's frequent fliers. "I dreamed of being a pilot or an astronaut, exploring the world and the universe," she recalls.

She went to college in the U.S., studying ME and aerospace engineering on a scholarship to Cornell University (Ithaca, NY). "I was one of the few women in many of my classes," she says. "It helped me in the long run, considering that the industry is so heavily male populated."

At school, she joined the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA). She's been a member for more than twenty years now, and was recently elected the AIAA's director of aerospace sciences. She's the first woman to hold the position, which oversees the largest AIAA technical directorate. 

After she received her BS in 1981 she attended Stanford University (Palo Alto, CA), worked as a research assistant, and co-opped at NASA. She worked on computational flow dynamics side by side with Kalpana Chawla, who went on to become an astronaut and died in the Columbia Space Shuttle this February. It was Chawla who encouraged Ying to get her pilot's license. 

Ying received her PhD in aeronautics and astronautics in 1986. In 1990 she joined a new combined engineering college for Florida A&M and Florida State University. She was one of the first faculty members there, teaching in the new ME department and researching at the Supercomputer Computations Research Institute on campus. In 1993 she did aeronautical research at the Ames Scalable Computing Laboratory at Iowa State University. 

Then she was accepted in NASA's astronaut program, but a diagnosis of early-stage cancer forced her to drop out for treatment. She took a job with McDonnell Douglas (Long Beach, CA) in 1995.

Her first job was working on the Advanced Subsonic Transport contract with NASA, applying her experience in computational fluid dynamics to actual aircraft design. When Boeing bought the company in 1997, Ying became systems engineering lead on a project to extend the flying range of the C-17 aircraft. 

She entered the executive development program in 2001, working with colleague Eric Anderson on several strategic projects. She opted for early graduation when she was appointed executive program integrator for Phantom Works.