Celebrating PHD and engineer, April Ericson via Wikipedia
Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Ericsson-Jackson attended the Cambridge School of Weston. She was the first female, and the first African-American female, to receive a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from Howard University and the first African-American female to receive a Ph.D. in engineering at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Ericsson has won many awards, including the 1997 “Women in Science and Engineering” award for the best female engineer in the federal government, and she is currently the instrument manager for a proposed mission to bring dust from the Martian lower atmosphere back to Earth.