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Patricia Massimini |
The Road Back to MITRE Was Paved with Reinvention
Patricia Massimini
March 2007
Growing up, Patricia Massimini always knew she wanted to be an
engineer like her father. "I was fascinated by the Manhattan Project,
and I dreamed of being there during the beginning of the nuclear
program in the '40s and '50s with all of the incredible new discoveries,"
she explains. "Instead I got in on the tail end."
Despite her latecomer status, Massimini pursued her dream, earning
a bachelor's in mathematics and physics and master's degrees in
nuclear engineering and science, technology, and public policy.
She worked as a nuclear engineer focusing on safety at the Westinghouse
Hanford Company, the U.S. Office of Technology Assessment, and the
U.S. General Accounting Office before joining MITRE in the mid-1980s.
At MITRE, Massimini provided safety oversight for Department of
Energy weapons processing facilities and worked with the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission on power reactors.
With the end of the Cold War and the movement away from nuclear
power, the need for Massimini's skills became less urgent. So she
transferred to a project modeling military hospitals for the Air
Force, where she helped design front-line tent hospitals with fully
equipped operating rooms. When MITRE spun off a portion of its non-defense
operations to Mitretek Systems in the mid-1990s, Massimini's work
went to Mitretek, where she again reinvented herself—this time as
a geostatistician. She worked on environmental remediation before
going on to support the U.S. Army's program to safely destroy chemical
munitions.
"I think if there is a theme in my career, it's modeling operational
systems to improve them or increase safety," she says. "The other
theme is working for the public good, and that makes a huge amount
of difference to me."
Along the way, Massimini also found time to raise a family and
to acquire her doctorate in operations research. "My kids always
complained about being in school for a long time, but they'll never
be able to outdo me. I was a professional student for 35 years,"
she says.
Finding a Home in Aviation
While Massimini was passionate about her work to safely destroy
chemical weapons, it required her to be onsite in Aberdeen, Md.,
during the week. Wanting to spend more than just weekends with her
family, she began looking for a career change that would allow her
to return to MITRE, where her husband, Vince Massimini, worked in
the Center for Advanced Aviation System Development (CAASD) in McLean,
Va.
In 1998, Massimini joined CAASD's new airspace program, where
she reinvented herself yet again. "You just get used to spending
the first six months being stupid at a new job," she says. "Eventually
I really felt like I got my feet under me. I love aviation, and
it has been very challenging and created a lot of opportunities
for me."
As a simulation modeling engineer, Massimini supported the Federal
Aviation Administration's program to redesign the national airspace
system. She has led teams that built models of en route and terminal
area airspace and helped simulate and analyze new design concepts.
One of her recent successes is the Florida Airspace Optimization
project. With FAA support, MITRE was able to redesign airspace and
routes from south Florida to the northeastern U.S. in record time
to alleviate congestion by the start of the 2006 winter travel season.
Even more recently, Massimini combined her passions for safety analysis
and aviation in a new assignment analyzing the safety of a proposed
system for air traffic control.
Quilting Champ
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This quilt featuring
the Massiminis’ acrobatic plane flying over their
Maryland airstrip won third place in a quilt contest
at the EAA Airshow in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. |
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On any given weekend, the Massiminis can be found at their second
home on Kent Island on Maryland's eastern shore, where they house
their plane, a Maule. Vince is a retired Marine pilot, and the couple
regularly flies to visit their children and grandchildren around
the country or just to nearby airports for brunch.
While Massimini has taken ground school, she opted not to get
her pilot's license. She doesn't want to take time away from her
true passion: quilting. "I'd rather spend my extra time these days
working on my art as opposed to learning to fly," she says.
A life-long seamstress, Massimini's introduction to quilting came
when she got a free lesson along with a new sewing machine. From
there it was a love affair hampered only by the limitations of her
small-format machine. "It was such a problem to handle all of that
material with my little machine," she explains. "Since then, I have
made an investment in a machine that is 12-feet long by 4-feet deep.
It's just miraculous."
Since getting her long-arm quilting machine, Massimini has made
dozens of quilts for friends and family and has started Island Girl
Quilts, a small business where she helps other quilters plan their
designs and topstitch their quilts. "In the quilting community,
there are some women who are computer savvy and mathematically inclined,
but not many," she explains. "My quantitative background makes me
a fast quilter and allows me to help other people figure things
out in their designs."
To further unite her loves of mathematics and quilting, Massimini
is helping to plan a quilt show at MITRE. Her contribution will
be a series of three mathematical quilts featuring the Pythagorean
theorem, a Fibonacci series, and an Archimedean spiral. "I'll get
an appreciative audience here that I probably wouldn't get at a
standard quilt show," she says.
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Since getting her long-arm
quilting machine, Massimini has made dozens of quilts for
friends and family and has started Island Girl Quilts, a small
business where she helps other quilters plan their designs
and topstitch their quilts. |
—by Rachael Morgan
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