Lillia Hammond graduated from Amherst last month with a double major in physics and art history, and she is studying toward a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering through Dartmouth College’s five-year Engineering Exchange Program. For her senior thesis, she worked with Dartmouth professor Kristina Lynch on the GNEISS mission, a nationwide collaboration that aims to study Earth’s aurorae by launching rockets high into the atmosphere. Before finals week, I sat down with Lillia to talk about her journey in mechanical engineering, plus how she almost ended up in art school.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Tell me a little bit about yourself.
Yeah, my name is Lillia. I’m a physics and art history double major here at Amherst. I’m also doing the Dartmouth dual-degree program in Mechanical Engineering here at Amherst, and I’m one of the co-presidents of Spectra [Physics and Astronomy Club]. I’m one of the co-captains of the club volleyball team, and I do a lot of work in the machine shop with [Jim Kubasek].
What brought you to study mechanical engineering specifically?
I got to take the machine shop intro class [with Jim] during my SURF summer, when I worked with [Prof. Dave Hanneke], and I instantly fell in love with it. It was so exciting every day … I started a project at the end of those three weeks during the SURF machine shop class. And I asked Jim, “Hey, can I come back in the fall to finish it in between my classes?” And he was like, “Oh, of course, come in.” And then I kind of just became his apprentice … he’s really been a big mentor for me. He’s been so generous with his time, and he’s taught me so much about machining.
And at the same time, Prof. Carter was my CBL, or Clare Boothe Luce, mentor, which is a special type of funding for SURF for women in the physical sciences … During a check-in with Prof. Carter later that year, after that summer, she encouraged me to apply to the Dartmouth program because she saw the work I was doing in the machine shop, and she saw me really lean towards mechanical projects, and I’d taken PHYS-125 [Oscillations and Waves] with her. It was like, “Wow, I love physics so much, but the stuff that I want to do for a job is mechanical engineering.”
What led you to choose your thesis topic?
When I got to the Dartmouth program in the fall of 2023, I really wanted to work for a lab, and so I was reaching out to professors in the mechanical engineering department … And one of them had a conversation with me, and was like, “I don’t have any room in my lab, but you seem to have a lot of skills, especially with 3D modeling. You should email this physics professor who takes a lot of engineering students.”
And so I emailed Professor Kristina Lynch in the physics department at Dartmouth, and she emailed me back, like a week later, asking if I knew about SolidWorks [an integrated 3D design software]. And I was like, “Yes.” And then she was like, “Come by the lab this afternoon.” And then I just started working for her …
I love learning about physics, but the actual work I enjoy doing is designing and modeling … So [my work with Prof. Lynch] was a really cool combination of [my two interests], and I knew I wanted to keep working for the lab while I was back at Amherst for my senior year. And a thesis was the perfect way to make sure I could cut out time to work for the lab.
Could you give me a rundown of your thesis work?
I designed flight hardware for sounding rockets to be launched through an aurora to measure our atmospheric parameters. And we’re looking at the aurora up in rural Alaska, mostly because the aurora only exists at those high latitudes … Our lab has already launched a bunch of similar rockets to measure this data in various forms, but my job was to improve the data acquisition parts of the instruments, and also to improve the fabrication processes while maintaining the same electrical functions.
The main instruments that I worked on were our PIPs, or petite ion probes, which are sent on both our main payloads and ejectable sub-payloads to collect ionospheric data. Ions in the atmosphere enter the PIPs and the current is measured. And from that data, we can get the ion temperature, ion density and ion drift.
I improved the mechanical design [of the PIPs] to make them more easily manufacturable … A year or two ago, one undergraduate spent an entire semester, 10 weeks straight, 40 hours a week, building these PIPs. And because of the changes that I made to cut out vestigial processes, we decreased fabrication time by 75%, which is really cool.
And I also improved the bobs that eject as sub-payloads from the rockets. The bobs had an interesting spinning behavior after they were ejected, called coning. So we introduced a lot of new mass asymmetries to this new version of the bob … Before, we had two different circuit boards … but [the electrical engineering team] went from two boards to one board, so that made the mass distribution asymmetrical.
In order to make the overall movement of the bob better, I had to make sure everything was balanced. So I learned a lot about dynamics — I never took Dynamics [an upper-level physics elective], and I’ll be taking it next year at Dartmouth, actually. But I had to self-teach a lot of the material. I also made a lot of supporting structures and like electrical boxes to be compatible with the commercially bought circuit boards we made.
How did this engineering project compare to the physics research that you have done here?
In terms of comparing it to other projects that I’ve done, I would say it’s pretty similar. I’ve done an industry internship before, and it’s all about defining the problem, making improvements, collaborating, learning about the physics behind everything.
Could you tell me more about your industry internship? A lot of physics majors look for summer research internships, so what was it like working in industry?
For context, I did SURF with Prof. Hanneke after my freshman year, and then I did an REU [Research Experience for Undergraduates] in condensed matter at UC Santa Barbara after my sophomore year … [At UCSB] I was doing 3D modeling, and I was coding in LabView [a graphical design platform] a little bit, but I was doing instrumentation, which edges on the engineering side.
Last summer, I was at SpaceX, working on the Starship payload structures team, which was really cool because my thesis is all about making instruments for the payload. At SpaceX, I helped build that payload — the part of the rocket that houses all the instruments that we want put up. In SpaceX’s case, it’s satellites.
I definitely got [the internship] because of the Dartmouth network. I’d also proved myself in my classes and projects, but it’s pretty hard for people who want to do engineering internships out of Amherst because we just simply don’t have a lot of alumni who go into mechanical engineering, because we don’t have a mechanical engineering program. They’re more like computer and electrical engineering, definitely.
Some advice I could give for industry internships in general: because of Amherst’s liberal-arts framework, you learn a lot about how to learn and how to think, which seems sort of hand-wavy, you know, but it really is true. I’m super happy I came to Amherst and I love the liberal arts, but the downside of that is that you don’t learn about technical skills … And so when I got to the internship, I was with kids from Berkeley, Georgia Tech and Purdue, who I’m sure have been taught how to use every machine. I felt super behind because I knew the equations, I knew the numbers … but I didn’t know how to use this program. I didn’t know how to use this machine … The good thing is that your learning curve will be exponential, and you will be prepared to teach yourself because you have such a good foundation in theory and problem-solving.
Turning back to your thesis, what are the next steps for the project? Will you continue to be involved?
Everything’s pretty much all designed on my end, and everything’s currently being machined at Dartmouth … We’re gonna go through a lot of rounds of testing, and each one builds on the next.
First of all, we’ll check all of our electrical connections and make sure we can query all of our PIPs, power them, and make sure they work. We have a plasma simulator at Dartmouth, so we’re going to run all of our instruments through that and make sure they can survive in a plasma environment [like Earth’s ionosphere]. We also are working with Wallops Flight Facility, the sounding rocket department at NASA down at Wallops in Virginia. There, we’ll send all of our instruments, and they’ll test everything again … one big thing is we’re gonna shake everything, because during launch, they have big loads, and there’s a lot of vibration, and it’s important that everything goes past the shake testing … We’re not the only lab in this collaboration — there are six or seven different universities and national labs on [this project], so there’s a lot of moving parts.
The aurora gets stronger every 11 years, so these next couple of years have a lot of high auroral activity, and it’s important to iterate and collect data now … From all this data that we’re going to synthesize, we’ll learn more about the structure of the ionosphere and the near-Earth space environment, which is pretty understudied … We can’t easily get up there. It’s not easily measurable. And so the bottom line [of the project] is learning more about near-Earth space and unstable auroral drivers.
What are your plans after graduation?
This summer, I’m going back to SpaceX, and then next year, I’m going back to Dartmouth to finish my Bachelor’s of Engineering in mechanical engineering. After that, my plan is to move to Southern California and work in the aerospace industry … I have a whole year until I am really in the market for a job, so I have a bit of time to figure it out.
You’ve also done a lot outside of engineering. What has been your favorite extracurricular activity at Amherst?
Outside of academics, absolutely club volleyball. Like, I spend four practices a week, at least. We do team lifts with the varsity trainers. We spend so much time together every week. I’ve been captain since my sophomore year … it’s just been a great outlet. I’ve learned so much about leadership and compromise and team management from that … and I think volleyball is really fun, so I want to keep playing beach volleyball, or, not like semi-professional and not like [recreational], but maybe something in between, like competitive recreational when I move to California after Dartmouth.
You mentioned that you’re also an art history major. Can you talk a little bit about that?
I’ve always just been super into art. When I was applying to colleges, I really wanted to double major or minor in photography, because that was my main medium. In high school, I did so much black-and-white photography, and I really almost went to art school — maybe not almost, but I was like, well, it could have been [a career]. But when I came to Amherst, I was like, “Wait, why is every [photography] class during the physics lab on Wednesday afternoons?” And so I never took [Photo 101] …
Then I started taking art history classes to balance out my physics classes … And then all of a sudden I look back, and I was like, “Wait, I’m almost a major, so let’s just do the last few classes that I would have taken anyways…” And so it kind of just fell into my lap. And I got really lucky that all worked out. I was able to get three majors and two degrees in five years, on top of doing all of my other extracurricular stuff.
I love [the art history major] — It’s definitely different from physics, but I like exercising that part of my brain. It’s made me a better writer, and I love learning about art. Actually, I took [a course called] “In Black and White”, which was about race and photography. And for one project, we had to create “black.” I saw people mix dirt outside, or burn things. But I was like, “Hi, Prof. Hanneke, can I use your interferometer to make black?” And then I could turn that in as an art history assignment. So there’s some overlap. I think it’s pretty cool. And a lot of people ask me, “Oh, how do you connect the two?” I don’t, except for small instances like that interferometer project, but it’s just two parts of my life that I really enjoy.
You’ve already shared a lot of wisdom about working in industry or engineering. Do you have any general advice for underclassmen who are pursuing the physics major here?
Really lean into the physics community, you know. When you get to upper-level classes, you’re going to need buddies to work with on problem sets. It’s no longer an optional thing. Really utilize that community and build relationships. Get to know your upper class — I still look back on my friendships with Fran and Megan and Julia and Vietta and Cailin and Alyssa and Allison and Sophie Koh… We have all these names you have getting thrown around here. Keeping that community strong is super important — not just for academics, but also for long-term friendships.