Delaware State University’s College of Mathematics, Natural Sciences and Technology (CMNST) will present Dr. Howard Conyers, a NASA rocket engineer, as a guest speaker at 7 p.m. Tuesday, April 25 in Parlor A (2nd floor) of the Martin Luther King Jr. Student Center
Dr. Conyers guest lecture is titled “Push Past Your Ancestors’ Wildest Dreams,” in which he notes,” We don’t have to fit the mold; we can define and make the mold.”
The event is part of the CMNST Dean’s Distinguished Lecturer Series and is free and open to the public.
Dr. Conyers earned a Doctorate in Mechanical Engineering from Duke University at age 27 in 2009, becoming one of less than 20 African American in the country to earn this degree. That same year, he joined the National Aeronautics and Space Administrtion (NASA) as a structural dynamicist (engineer) at the Engineering and Test Directorate at the John C. Stennis Space Center in Mississippi.He recently served as the principal investigator and project manager for the High Dynamic Range Stereo-X (HiDyRS-X) project. The two-year, $574,000 proposal to advance high speed, high dynamic range video, was one of four awarded agency-wide by the NASA Space Technology Mission Directorate Early Career Initiative in October 2014.
In June 2016, Howard led the team in demonstrating the technology’s capabilities in recording high speed, high dynamic range video during the Space Launch System Qualification Motor QM-2 Testing in Utah for the solid rocket booster test. The video went viral when released publically, amassing over 1.4 million YouTube hits and being picked up by media outlets around the world.
Dr. Conyers is also a product of North Carolina A&T University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree and master’s degree, both in Bioenvironmental Engineering
Outside of work, Dr. Conyers has equally impressive attributes that makes him sought out nationally, one of which he is a noted traditional South Carolina whole-hog barbecue Pitmaster. He has been featured in publications, including Southern Living Daily South, the New Orleans Magazine, the Advocate, and the New Orleans Time Picayune to name a few. Dr. Conyers was named a Fellow of the National Food and Beverage Foundation in 2016.
