Engines of Exploration

Of all her family photos, Kristin Houston (ENG’01) pulls out one when talking about her career. In the snapshot, her brother, a U.S. Army surgeon deployed overseas, is getting on a Chinook. The helicopter is one of several defense aircraft that Houston worked on during her 16-year tenure at Boeing. For her, the picture highlights the critical role engineers play in the world, and how doing “something that really matters” has been her driving force.

“People’s lives can literally be depending on the work that we do,” Houston says. “When I was leading Boeing programs, I would think about how somebody’s father, brother, sister or mother was on those aircraft.”

She is still guided by that principle at L3Harris Technologies, where she has been since 2021. As President of the Space Propulsion & Power Systems sector within the Aerojet Rocketdyne segment, her team supports NASA, the U.S. Space Force and commercial clients.

Read the full story in Penn Engineering magazine.