Anna-Maria Rivas McGowan

Agency Senior Executive, Complex Systems Design, NASA
BSAAE 1992

Anna-Maria Rivas McGowan began her career in aerospace engineering in 1992 after graduating from Purdue. She has served in positions of increasing technical and leadership responsibility at NASA and earned two additional degrees during her career. Her repertoire is vast and includes managing large, multi-million-dollar aeronautics programs covering numerous technical discipline areas. Her career has advanced innovation and demonstrated new capabilities for commercial and military systems through integrating groundbreaking technologies and methodologies with cross-domain and collaborative approaches.

She has distinguished herself as a leading expert in design science and innovation, complex strategy, systems engineering, organization science, advanced and morphing aircraft, and adaptive structures and materials.

After earning her PhD, she was selected to become NASA’s 1^st agency-level senior engineer for complex systems design — a prestigious senior technical (ST) executive position she has held since 2015. Of more than 18,000 NASA employees, only 84 are STs who are executives recognized as world-renowned researchers. A recent project entailed the study of user-centric autonomous aircraft systems that integrated aeronautical research from aerospace engineers with an ethnographic analysis in collaboration with senior anthropologists.

Using her depth of expertise in the physical, systems sciences and social sciences, she has integrated fields outside of aerospace with engineering approaches to improve system performance while also considering broader societal and human impacts. This is a rare combination, and the type of interdisciplinary leadership and research believed to be essential to a future where practitioners address ambiguous and complex challenges such as climate change, overcome global pandemics, and extend humanity’s home to the Moon, Mars, and beyond.

In previous roles, McGowan was the program manager for NASA’s visionary Aircraft Morphing Project that had wide-ranging impacts on the advancement of adaptive systems for aircraft and was the technology integration manager for the expansive Subsonic Fixed Wing Program. Her technical leadership skills led to her selection as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency technical agent for a unique, rapid flight program and her role with the National Science Foundation.  She co-founded the Inter-Agency Working Group on Engineering Complex Systems, facilitating executive-level collaborations between eight federal agencies.

“I have used every aspect of my Purdue education,” McGowan said. “Specifically, I developed an appreciation and interest in dynamics from several AAE classes and focused the early part of my career on aeroelasticity, becoming an aeroelastic wind tunnel test engineer and analyst.”

She earned a NASA Exceptional Achievement Medal and the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Lawrence Sperry Award, a national recognition given to someone age 35 or younger who has made advancements in aeronautics and astronautics. A 2004 Purdue Outstanding Aerospace Engineer Awardee, she regularly visits campus to participate in the School of Aeronautics and Astronautics’ Industry Advisory Council. She also is a frequent speaker at Minority Engineering Program functions and has volunteered her time on PhD committees. In 2023 was the instructor for the J. William Uhrig and Anastasia Vournas Distinguished Short Course Series hosted by the School of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

As an American from Trinidadian ancestry, she is a strong advocate for having a national and global view for her work. A recipient of several national awards, she has taught short courses and presented guest lectures in several countries and served as a consultant to national laboratories, major industries and government agencies across the U.S.  

Recalling her time as an undergraduate, McGowan shared a memory from Professor Kathleen Howell’s AAE340 course.

“I remember her tossing a football in class and using that to explain complex dynamics. Super tough class, but very rewarding and highly useful,” she said.

Another favorite professor was Terry Weisshaar, whom she calls “a brilliant and very personable aeroelastician.” And John Longuski, whose AAE 204 class she took sophomore year. “I still remember that his final exam was 75 pages to allow us plenty of space to write out our looooong solutions to the problems!”

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