NASA Glenn Research Center
Cleveland, Ohio
Turbomachinery and Propulsion Systems Division

Who I am ...

My name is Teryn DalBello and I have been working at NASA Glenn Research Center as a contractor through the University of Toledo, Ohio, for two years. I am working on problems concerned with combustion in air-breathing propulsion systems. My overall goal in life is to work on some really cool projects with some really cool and talented people while having lots of fun.

Where I came from ...

I was born in 1973 in Sacramento, California, and grew up in Corte Madera in Marin County, California (about 10 miles north of San Francisco). My childhood was plagued by my continuous and never-ending interest in mechanical devices and the processes and phenomena that govern the physical world. At around 12 years of age, I was given a poster picture of an airplane landing. After staring at the picture in wonder for several days, I realized that I would be studying airplanes for the rest of my life. From then on, my attention centered around airplanes and anything that can fly.

LEGOS were my door to the mechanical world--a world that I wanted to be part of. While my lifelong friend, Rick, was building mechanical systems and devices out of everyday materials, I built with LEGOS. After Rick and I experimented with balsa gliders, paper airplanes, model helicopters powered with rubberbands, and rockets, my interest in airplanes and helicopters accelerated rapidly. I was fascinated with the various types of aircraft that stay aloft, how they are controlled, and why they perform in a certain way. I continued this interest through high school, reading as much as I could about airplanes. I was especially interested in what allowed airplanes to fly at slow speeds and still maintain control. I became an Eagle Scout with the Boy Scouts of America on September 7, 1991, after 8 years of hard work.

I was admitted to University of California Davis in 1992 as an aeronautical and mechanical engineering major and graduated in June 1998. I guess now I can call myself an aeronautical and mechanical engineer, although I am truly an aeronautical engineer at heart.

On November 28, 1995, I began lessons to become a licensed pilot. I have accumulated 26 hours, 13 of which are solo time in a Cessna 152. Throughout college I flew radio-controlled airplanes, and I am still practicing to become a better aerobatic pilot. I enjoy showing off my skills in front of large crowds!

How my career developed ...

During the summers of 1997 and 1998 I worked as an intern at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, with Dr. Larry Carr, a physical scientist at the Fluid Mechanics Laboratory. I worked on Compressible Dynamic Stall problems associated with helicopter blades. I learned a great deal from this internship and am very fortunate to have been given thie opportunity to do what I have always dreamed of doing.

After graduating from UC Davis in 1998, I enrolled in a postgraduate research program at the von Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics in Rhode-Saint-Genese, Belgium. I spent 10 months working on the Diploma Degree, which gave me the opportunity to work with 36 other students from all over the world. While taking classes and completing research in the field of fluid mechanics, I studied high-temperature buoyancy driven flows. I also traveled to Turkey, Sweden, the Czech Republic, and throughout Western Europe.

In 2000, after traveling 2415 miles from California in a U-Haul truck, I started working at NASA Glenn Research Center.