FROM STAGE LIGHTS TO STARLIGHT

An art kid’s path from WVU to NASA to the Air Force

By West Virginia University

October 6^th, 2025

When Emily Certain left Long Island for college, she planned to design theater sets —not spacecraft.

A single rocket launch changed everything.

And, then, after submitting 1,000 internship applications, NASA IV&V at West Virginia University gave her a chance.

Nowadays, the WVU alum works at Edwards Air Force Base, flying aboard the C-17 as a flight test engineer while training at the National Test Pilot School and volunteering as a firefighter.

In this conversation, on the heels of visiting Charleston, West Virginia, to speak to hundreds of middle school students about the wonders of STEM, Certain shares how persistence helped her pivot from paintbrushes to flight test.

Emily Certain speaks to a crowd of West Virginia middle school students at NASA Day at the Clay Center in Charleston in 2024.

WVU alum Emily Certain interacts with a couple of middle school students at the Clay Center in Charleston, West Virginia.

Emily Certain shows a photo in front of a backdrop at the 2024 NASA Day in Charleston.

Q: You grew up in New York — what was childhood like?

A: I grew up on Long Island in a small town called Bay Shore, near the water. Our curriculum was mostly focused on business and the arts. I got really into the theater program, which is where I developed my love of the arts, theater, and drama.

Unfortunately, I did not focus too much on academics. I was more excited about hanging out with friends and art class. I didn’t nurture my academics nearly as much as I should have and I ended up back-logging a lot of my education and making it more expensive in the long run. But looking back, I don’t think I would have it any other way because it enabled me to learn a lot of lessons about forward planning.

Q: You started college in Florida planning to study art, right?

A: Yes, I was a fine arts major within the theater program at the University of South Florida. At first it started off with wanting to be on Broadway — being from New York— but it slowly evolved into wanting to work at Disney as an Imagineer, building giant sets and the immersive environments Disney is known for.

Q: But something changed your path.

A: Within the first semester, I went to a launch at Kennedy Space Center and it completely changed my trajectory. I originally went there just to work on a painting —it sounded like it’d be so cool to capture that in a different medium. One of my friends on my dorm floor invited me; they were all engineers. I had never seen a rocket launch and had no idea the impact it would have on me. After watching the announcer count down from 5, everything quiet, then the rumble of the rocket followed by just watching it ascend into the clouds — something touched me so deeply. I was like, I want to work in aerospace. I would love to be a part of something so much bigger than myself.

Emily Certain spent much of her youth as a theater and arts kid. After attending WVU, she's worked at NASA and now for the U.S. Air Force.

Q: What brought you to the Statler College of Engineering at West Virginia University?

A: After taking the classes I’d need, I started joining more clubs at USF. Through my rocketry club, I entered a CubeSat design competition, submitted a proposal, and ended up winning. That made me feel confident enough to start applying for internships. One day I sat in a coffee shop and applied to 1,000 internships — literally over 1,000 — and got rejected by all of them except NASA. NASA gave me 2 days to decide. I had to withdraw from USF and move to West Virginia — the NASA internship required me to go there, a state I’d never been in before. NASA WV Space Grant funded the NASA IV&V internship in Fairmont.

Q: You earned your bachelor's degree in aerospace and mechanical engineering here at WVU. You also were part of the Microgravity Research Team, Experimental Rocketry Team, and Amateur Radio Club, so it sounds like you were busy. How was your time at WVU?

A: Great. There were some challenges, but I pulled through. Once I started higher-level courses that involved a lot more math, my lack of preparation in high school became more apparent. Despite spending much of my time studying, I wasn't performing as well as my peers and, at one point, ended up taking a course 3 times only to finally pass by 1 point. Guidance counselors told me to stop, to change my major. But I kept going. Even when everybody was telling me to stop, I just kept going.

Marcus Fisher, who was my first NASA mentor (and also a WVU alum and former adjunct professor), laid the roadway for me to follow that I still take today into the office. He taught me how to present myself, how to have tough conversations, and how to promote new ideas to those who may be reluctant to change.

A middle school student chats with Emily Certain at NASA Day (2024) at the Clay Center in Charleston.

Symbolic of her post-WVU career, Emily Certain looks up.

Emily Certain takes time to pose for a photographer with a West Virginia youth.

Emily Certain's secret to success? Brown Bear. "Anytime I have a big presentation or something, I’ll put him in my backpack and he’ll be there for emotional support." Here she is with Brown Bear by a C-17 at Edwards Air Force Base.

Q: And now you’re at Edwards Air Force Base in California. What do you do?

A: I support the advancement of capabilities for the Air Force’s C-17 fleet and work with both pilots and aircrew to make it possible. As a flight test engineer, my primary role is to serve as a test conductor and discipline engineer to extract real-time data and inform pilots of performance characteristics that result from upgrades made to our systems.

Q: You’ve mentioned art still matters to you.

A: Yes! I still love to keep in touch with my roots by designing mission patches and team T-shirts. Going behind the scenes at the Clay Center for NASA Day recently awoke that theater kid in me again. I really want to get back into it in a volunteer capacity.

Q: You just gave a speech to a bunch of West Virginia middle school students about STEM and connected with them by mentioning your penchant for “Animal Crossing” and collecting Squishmallows. Do you have a favorite plushie?

A: My first plushie ever, a brown bear named Brown Bear. He’s been with me every step of the way — from my move to WVU to my graduation — and next helping me get my master’s at the test pilot school. Anytime I have a big presentation or something, I’ll put him in my backpack and he’ll be there for emotional support.

Q: And your future?

A: I was recently accepted into the National Test Pilot School and look forward to improving my skills as a flight test engineer. I hope to one day be a NASA test pilot though, until then, I’m excited to get involved in more STEM outreach and make my way back to West Virginia again soon.