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Pamela M. Norris
Associate Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
University of Virginia
Mechanical Engineer
When I was in fourth grade, my class visited a NASA learning lab where I learned the basic concepts of engineering. That night, I announced to my family that I wanted to be an electrical engineer. Ever since that day, my career goal has maintained steady. I went to college at Old Dominion University and continued my studies at Georgia Tech, becoming only the third female there to receive a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering. Next I spent an incredible year and a half at the University of California, Berkeley.
I am now an associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the University of Virginia. I truly love my career in teaching, interacting with and learning from the students. I particular enjoy working with the student researchers in my lab. I've watched Ph.D. students evolve from insecure starting graduate students to researchers with a national reputation. Watching each of them give their first technical presentation at a conference, I think I must have felt like a proud parent watching her child in a school play. I cannot imagine feeling more pride then at those moments.
Besides teaching, Pamela is also the director of the Aerogel Research Lab. Aerogels are highly porous solids made out of materials such as silica, alumina, or zirconia. Due to their ultrafine pore sizes and extremely low density, aerogels are excellent thermal and acoustic insulators, building materials, and filters. They can be twice as effective as environmentally harmful insulators, such as CFC-blown polyurethane foams. One type of aerogel, the silica aerogel, is the lowest density solid material ever fabricated.
