2022-12-06
https://news.mit.edu/2022/channeling-creativity-through-art-and-engineering-1128
工科也应该有艺术的味道。艺术也不应该排斥工科。他们可以同行。
Emily Satterfield likes to create. Whether she’s crocheting a dress she saw on TikTok, baking a cake, dancing at Cambridge’s Havana Club, or tinkering on a project, she fills her days with activities that channel her seemingly endless creativity.
“Being creative has always been a huge part of who I am. I get a new hobby every week. I just love anything that involves making things,” says Satterfield ’22, who recently graduated from MIT with a degree in mechanical engineering.
Raised in Lowell, Massachusetts, Satterfield was surrounded by creativity from a young age. Her mother is a teacher with a passion for art and oil painting. Her father is an electrical engineer with a knack for do-it-yourself automation projects. Growing up, she thought of art and engineering as two separate entities. You couldn’t be both an artist and an engineer.
“I always thought that engineering and art were opposites and you couldn’t really do both,” she says.
Finding a Balance at MIT
Upon enrolling in MIT, Satterfield set out to study electrical engineering at MIT. But she quickly found herself gravitating more toward mechanical engineering. For her, making robots move was exhilarating.
One of her first opportunities to build a robot came in the spring of her sophomore year. She enrolled in 2.007 (Design and Manufacturing I). Students in the class design and build their own robots. The class culminates in a boisterous final robot competition.
But halfway through the semester, Satterfield and her fellow students were sent home due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Stuck at home, she craved a creative outlet and took up drawing. Her time in quarantine helped her realize that her twin passions of art and engineering didn’t have to be mutually exclusive.
“That’s when I started to realize that art was who I was,” she says. “Especially as a mechanical engineer, I realized how engineering and art aren’t opposites. They actually go hand-in-hand. When you’re designing or building something, you are literally creating something new.”
Her drive for creation led her to an undergraduate research opportunity, known as a SuperUROP, with Professor David Hardt. The project examined the use of additive manufacturing to build low-cost homes for individuals experiencing homelessness. The goal is to utilize techniques like 3D printing to build lightweight homes made out of recycled plastics. She continued work on the project for her senior thesis.
In the senior capstone class 2.009 (Product Engineering Processes), Satterfield had an opportunity to merge her love of art and engineering further. Rather fittingly, her team built a prototype for a device named “Palette.” The portable product enables painters to tint paint to the exact shade they need onsite, eliminating time-consuming trips to the paint store. The team worked with Benjamin Moore to develop their product.
Working with her fellow mechanical engineering students on a large, intensive project like Palette gave Satterfield a preview of what working on an engineering team in industry would be like.
“Most Course 2 students like building things and talking about the things they make, which lends well to teamwork and teaching each other different things. Creative engineers are really good teammates, and I think that’s very true about most Course 2 students,” she says.
After graduating in May, Satterfield joined the creative engineers at SpaceX. Over the summer, she participated in the company’s associate program.
Satterfield now works as a structures engineer for the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft team. She and her coworkers develop technologies for the spacecraft. In early October, as the crewed Dragon took off from Cape Canaveral, technologies that Satterfield worked on were on the spacecraft.
“It was really cool to see something that I helped work on have an impact. Knowing that there are people inside the spacecraft really put things into perspective,” she adds.
Despite her busy schedule, she still has managed to find new hobbies — the latest of which involves refinishing furniture for her new apartment in California. Whatever the future holds, Satterfield will continue to pursue outlets for her creativity.
“I’m excited to see long term how I can take my weird, kind of discombobulated interests and combine them into my own thing,” she says.
Emily Satterfield 喜欢创作。无论是钩编在 TikTok 上看到的裙子、烤蛋糕、在剑桥的哈瓦那俱乐部跳舞，还是修补一个项目，她的每一天都充满了激发她看似无穷无尽的创造力的活动。
“富有创造力一直是我的重要组成部分。我每周都有一个新爱好。我只是喜欢任何涉及制作东西的东西，”22 岁的 Satterfield 说，他最近从麻省理工学院毕业并获得了机械工程学位。
萨特菲尔德在马萨诸塞州洛厄尔长大，从小就被创造力所包围。她的母亲是一位对艺术和油画充满热情的老师。她的父亲是一名电气工程师，擅长自己动手进行自动化项目。在成长过程中，她认为艺术和工程是两个独立的实体。你不能既是艺术家又是工程师。
“我一直认为工程和艺术是对立的，你不可能两者兼得，”她说。
在麻省理工学院找到平衡点
进入麻省理工学院后，萨特菲尔德开始在麻省理工学院学习电气工程。但她很快发现自己更倾向于机械工程。对她来说，让机器人移动是一件令人兴奋的事情。
她的第一个制造机器人的机会出现在她大二那年的春天。她就读于 2.007（设计与制造 I）。班上的学生设计和建造自己的机器人。班级在一场热闹的决赛机器人比赛中达到高潮。
但在学期进行到一半时，由于 Covid-19 大流行，萨特菲尔德和她的同学们被送回家了。困在家里，她渴望有一个创造性的出口并开始画画。隔离期间让她意识到，她对艺术和工程的双重热情并不一定是相互排斥的。
“那时我开始意识到艺术就是我，”她说。“尤其是作为一名机械工程师，我意识到工程和艺术并不是对立的。他们实际上是齐头并进的。当你在设计或建造某样东西时，你实际上是在创造新的东西。”
她的创作动力使她获得了与 David Hardt 教授一起进行本科生研究的机会，该研究被称为 SuperUROP。该项目研究了使用增材制造为无家可归者建造低成本房屋的情况。目标是利用 3D 打印等技术建造由回收塑料制成的轻型房屋。她继续为她的高级论文项目工作。
在高级顶点课程 2.009（产品工程流程）中，Satterfield 有机会进一步融合她对艺术和工程的热爱。恰如其分，她的团队为名为“Palette”的设备构建了一个原型。该便携式产品使油漆工能够在现场将油漆调色到他们需要的准确色调，从而省去了前往油漆店的耗时。该团队与本杰明摩尔合作开发了他们的产品。
与她的机械工程专业同学一起参与像 Palette 这样的大型密集项目，让 Satterfield 预演了在工业工程团队中工作会是什么样子。
“大多数课程 2 的学生喜欢建造东西并谈论他们制造的东西，这有助于团队合作和互相教授不同的东西。创意工程师是非常好的队友，我认为大多数课程 2 的学生都是如此，”她说。
5 月毕业后，萨特菲尔德加入了 SpaceX 的创意工程师团队。整个夏天，她参加了公司的助理项目。
萨特菲尔德现在是 SpaceX 龙飞船团队的一名结构工程师。她和她的同事为航天器开发技术。10 月初，当载人龙飞船从卡纳维拉尔角起飞时，萨特菲尔德研究的技术就在飞船上。
“看到我帮助开展的工作产生影响真的很酷。知道航天器里面有人真的让事情变得更清晰了，”她补充道。
尽管她的日程很忙，但她仍然设法找到了新的爱好——最近的爱好是为她在加利福尼亚的新公寓重新装修家具。无论未来如何，萨特菲尔德都将继续为她的创造力寻找出路。
“我很高兴看到从长远来看，我如何能够将我奇怪的、杂乱无章的兴趣组合成我自己的东西，”她说。
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