First Graduate of Mines New Ceramic Engineering Minor Becomes Lead NASA Engineer

Jenna Sayler never imagined she'd be heading up a team at NASA fresh out of college – but that's exactly where she's landed.

As the first graduate of the new ceramic engineering minor at South Dakota Mines, Sayler secured a role in the nonmetallic materials and space environmental effect group at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, a team that has not hired a new college graduate in three decades.

Now, she’s at the forefront of space exploration, spearheading research in additive ceramics, supporting liquid engine technology and leading plasma torch innovation – all critical components in NASA’s mission to push the boundaries of what's possible in space.Sayler graduated last May with a metallurgical engineering degree and a minor in ceramics engineering.

Sayler said she “fit into the puzzle” of what NASA was looking for. “They are just really getting into ceramics heavily right now and because their knowledgeable ceramicist of 20 years recently retired, I was able to step into that role using my recent experience from my ceramics minor.”

Sayler is part of the ceramics and ablatives team within the EM41 Branch – the nonmetallic materials and space environmental effect group responsible for supporting, directing, and conducting nonmetallic material research and space environmental effects testing across the entire life cycle of space exploration hardware. She also works with the Advanced Manufacturing branch, getting more acquainted with the Marshall Space Flight Center’s various printing machines and robotics.

Sayler’s current work builds on her 2024 summer internship at NASA—an opportunity she nearly missed. “It was completely out of the blue,” she said. “I started the application but never finished. They saw my application in the waiting window and noticed I was part of the South Dakota Space Grant Consortium, so they gave me a call. That’s what brought me here that summer.”

Now, Sayler oversees additive ceramics, supports liquid engine operations, and leads the plasma torch team—continuing many of the projects from her internship while embracing new responsibilities.

Since starting with NASA earlier this year, Sayler has taken the lead on operating NASA’s new ceramic printing machine and the material testing and ceramic material characterizations needed to create more sustainable parts/components for high temperature applications.

“An example of these high thermal parts are tungsten throat rings that get really degraded from how hot our test motors burn. Our motors burn so hot that they actually burn through the tungsten,” Sayler said. The team is currently learning and exploring how to develop parts on this ceramic printing machine and how to verify their reusability.

“Our goal right now is to print some parts to test and evaluate in high thermal conditions and see how well they hold up. If we can get certification on our printing capabilities in the next three years, that would be amazing,” she said.

Sayler’s team is currently working on various prints that will be sent out to different NASA teams for testing. While she won't be conducting the tests, Sayler worked on learning how to test ceramics during her undergraduate work at Mines. "A lot of this ceramic work was what I was doing with Dr. Donovan,” Sayler said of Katrina Donovan, Ph.D., senior lecturer in the Department of Materials and Metallurgical Engineering. “I’ve actually performed all these mechanical tests myself, so I have a really good understanding of why we are performing these various tests and how to read the data we receive from them. Although I don’t have to physically do the testing as we have many different expert teams for every test, I can understand what the data is telling me thanks to my MET program at Mines.”

Sayler credits the university’s hands-on program for giving her a strong foundation that blended her passion for engineering with her creativity. “I've always been a creative person with lots of different hobbies like glassblowing or stained glass, and I've probably been doing pottery since seventh or eighth grade.”

The Mines ceramics engineering minor supports the university’s commitment to enhancing undergraduate STEM education. “Our goal is to develop an academic program that incorporates art concepts into engineering, fostering innovation, creativity, collaboration, and entrepreneurship while expanding the pool of undergraduate talent,” Donovan said.