It’s unusual enough that Jimmy and Danny Atkinson, twin brothers, are studying aerospace engineering side by side at Purdue. They’re not the only ones — In fact, there have been as many as nine sets of twins to graduate with a degree from Purdue AAE, including two who now work together at Blue Origin. 

But Jimmy and Danny, a couple of Chicago natives, took an exceedingly rare path as well. They passed up major scholarships to Illinois and Iowa-based schools, and decided to stick together – crossing the state line to Purdue Northwest, in Hammond, Indiana.

“At PNW, they counted Chicago as in-state tuition. It was 25 minutes away from our house, cheaper than any community college in our area, and a pipeline to Purdue,” Danny says. “We got involved in SAE Baja — we worked on the car and held a car show as a fundraiser.” 

Jimmy and Danny Atkinson got involved with the SAE Baja Team while studying at the Purdue Northwest campus in Hammond, Indiana. 

They had aerospace engineering in their sights and scholarships from Purdue’s Minority Engineering Program to help them along. But it wasn’t a sure shot.  

“We realized if we went to the Northwest campus first, we would get all our credits transferred and it would be significantly cheaper. But Aero only accepts 7 students as transfers, and needed 3.7 GPA,” Danny says.  

“We were two of the seven picked. We were very lucky.” 

Jimmy and Danny both took Prof. Steven Collicott's Zero-Gravity Flight Experiments course (AAE 418). They helped design an experiment to study liquid slosh under microgravity. With NASA funding procured by Prof. Collicott, this experiment will eventually fly on a suborbital rocket and into space. 

Inspired by Midway

The Atkinson brothers are Chicago-area natives, with family ties in Mexico. Before their busy college lives, full of clubs and internships, they would visit their large extended family in Mexico twice a year. They’ve got foundational bonds to the Windy City, too — with Dad as an officer with the Chicago Police, and Mom as a news editor at Chicago’s NBC affiliate.

From left to right: Mom, Danny, Sister, Jimmy, Dad

“We grew up by Midway airport, so we always used to see planes fly,” Jimmy says. “We didn’t really choose aerospace for the math and science. We love airplanes and wanted to understand how they work.”  

In adolescence, they moved out to the suburbs specifically for schools fostering those interests. They benefited greatly from Lyons Township High School. “It’s one of those programs where you get a lot out of it — if you put in the work. Our school’s selling point was the extracurricular activities. Auto shop, wood shop, engineering and robotics teams, aviation teams,” Jimmy says.  

“We really enjoyed it, and it definitely paid off in preparing us for Purdue.” 

Danny shows Prof. Collicott design change ideas for the slosh experiment that Danny's team was designing and building in AAE418.

In addition to robotics club and auto shop, they joined the Young Eagles program in high school. It covered the ticket cost to attend their first EAA AirVenture at Oshkosh, where they saw their favorite plane: Doc, the B-29 Superfortress. They also racked up most of their private pilot training hours through Young Eagles, before they even had drivers licenses. 

Jimmy and Danny learned to fly in part through the Young Eagles program at their high school, earning many of their flight hours before they even had drivers licences.

Flying as hobby, tinkering as profession 

But they didn’t want to be pilots for a living – both want to keep flight as a fun hobby, albeit one tangential to their profession. They chose to study engineering because of their need to tinker.  

“We were always curious to take things apart and put them back together. We liked working on cars, making model airplanes. We wanted to work with our hands and build things, and we had to learn the math as we went,” Danny says.  

The Atkinson twins explored their knack for tinkering with this Oldsmobile 442, which they worked on in their home garage.

“It’s not easy.” 

Despite the work, it’s passion for planes that keeps them sticking with it — and sticking together.  

“It’s really fortunate that our family enjoys it also. We’ve been to Oshkosh with them 3 times. No matter how big you think it is, it’s bigger. It’s massive. Instead of family movies, we watch documentaries about aviation, space, and history such as Air Crash Investigations,” Jimmy says. 

Headed toward a master's

Purdue has been full of opportunity for Jimmy and Danny: “In the first two weeks after coming to Purdue, we got internship and co-op offers from Rolls-Royce and Northrop Grumman. We were introduced through NSBE [National Society of Black Engineers], and we got them because we love working with our hands, and on cars,” Danny says. Jenny Strickland, associate director in Purdue's Office of Professional Practice, has also been a big help and advocate for the Atkinson twins.

"I met Danny and Jimmy during the co-op callout held by OPP the year they transferred. They were so eager to pursue opportunities in industry. It’s been so rewarding to see their hard work pay off and to have witnessed them succeed inside and outside of the classroom," she says. "Danny and Jimmy are a testament to maximizing your networks, opportunities, and involvement at Purdue." 

This summer, they’re interning together once again at Rolls-Royce LibertyWorks, in Indianapolis, Indiana, and have applied for the combined 4+1 program in the School of Aeronautics and Astronautics, to complete a masters’ in AAE with just one more year of study. 

Rolls-Royce Liberty Works Internship Summer 2023

“If you were to ask us to draw a branch diagram all the different paths, there are so many different paths we could’ve gone. There were a lot of people that helped us out, and some really weird circumstances too,” Danny says.   

“This worked out pretty well.” 

Jimmy and Danny spend a lot of their time in the third-floor study area in Armstrong Hall. Their constant presence made them an integral part of this tight-knit AAE study group.