Heather Kline
Aerodynamics Engineer at Virgin Galactic
Mojave, California, United States
Summary
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Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolHeather Kline is an aerodynamics engineer with 11 years of experience applying physics-based simulations to make air and space vehicles more efficient, from hypersonic inlet optimization to high-speed transport design. She holds a PhD from Stanford on the continuous adjoint method for multi-fidelity hypersonic inlet design and has translated that research into production-grade CFD and multidisciplinary tools used at NASA centers and in industry. At Virgin Galactic she applies high-temperature aerothermodynamics and boundary-layer transition expertise developed during her NASA-facing research roles at Langley and national labs. A long-time SU2 contributor and backend developer, she has extended the adjoint solver to support multi-objective optimization and thermochemical non-equilibrium modeling, demonstrating both deep numerical skill and practical code engineering in C++, Python, and Fortran. Based in Mojave, CA, she pairs rigorous academic training with hands-on flight-relevant simulation work and a track record of shipping validated tools for challenging high-speed regimes.
11 years of coding experience
3 years of employment as a software developer
Bachelor of Science (BS), Dual Aerospace & Mechanical Engineering, GPA 3.82, Bachelor of Science (BS), Dual Aerospace & Mechanical Engineering, GPA 3.82 at Rensselaer Polytechnic InstituteMaster's degree, Aerospace, Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering, GPA 3.85, Master's degree, Aerospace, Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering, GPA 3.85 at Stanford University
Github Skills (8)
computational-fluid-dynamics10
fluid-dynamics10
adx10
c-language10
adp10
cprogramming-language10
adt10
open-source9
Programming languages (3)
Github contributions (5)
su2code/SU2
Aug 2016 - Oct 2018
SU2: An Open-Source Suite for Multiphysics Simulation and Design
Role in this project:
Backend Developer
Backend DeveloperContributions:246 commits, 51 PRs, 151 pushes in 2 years 1 month
Contributions summary:Heather's commits primarily involve modifications to the SU2 code, specifically the `SU2_PY` directory. These commits focus on adding functionality related to heat flux storage, removing unused functions, and registering combo objectives for the discrete adjoint method. The changes also include the integration of a generalized outflow objective and addressing issues related to multi-objective optimization within the adjoint framework, demonstrating expertise in extending the adjoint solver.
physicsmultiphysics-simulationpythoncfdsnl-applications
hlkline/SU2
Jan 2015 - Oct 2018
SU2 Suite
Contributions:41 PRs, 443 pushes, 80 branches in 3 years 9 months
suitesu2
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