Sage Herz flies a rotorcraft alongside her advisor, Matthew McCrink. Credit: Courtesy of the Office of Marketing and Communications
A quarter of the aerospace industry is women and Sage Herz is one of them.
Herz, an aerospace engineering doctoral student at Ohio State, was among 30 women who received the annual 2025 Amelia Earhart Fellowship at an Oct. 1 ceremony.
Offered by Zonta International, a women’s rights group, the fellowship was established in 1938 to honor pilot and Zonta member, Amelia Earhart. The association offers $10,000 annually to women who are pursuing a Ph.D. and doctoral degrees in aerospace engineering and space sciences fields.
“It was really awesome to actually receive it and just to be recognized not only in Amelia Earhart’s legacy, but also alongside all other really impressive women in aerospace engineering from this year and from previous years,” Herz said.
This fellowship has been on Herz’s mind for a couple of years but she said she has been hesitant to apply. Herz said she believed receiving the money would be a long shot, but took the chance and submitted her application for her fifth and final year as a Ph.D. student.
Herz came to Ohio state in 2021 to pursue a Ph.D. in aerospace engineering, where she inherited a project testing multirotor vehicles, which includes a typical four-rotor drone. However, working with the vehicles in her first two years was challenging, as they were finicky and failed to provide reliable data, Herz said.
“It was through a lot of persistence and just trying basically everything, we were able to get to a point where we were really happy with the result and actually being able to get good measurements from these vehicles,” Herz said.
Matthew McCrink, assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering and director of the Aerodynamic Flow Control and Advanced Diagnostics (AFCAD) research group, advises Herz’s research.
Herz dives into the limitations and safety concerns while the multirotor vehicles are in the air. McCrink said Herz’s research focuses on how the machines respond to different factors like wind gusts and urban settings to see what can be improved.
“Actually building the drones, going out, flying, and making data measurements, and then coming back and building better models from those tests is what she’s been primarily focused on,” McCrink said.
McCrink said Herz being recognized by the community for the steps she’s taken to go forth and do good work has been validating for him and makes him feel seen as a researcher.
“The whole point of doing research in an academic setting is that you produce these students that have this capability that can go out and do good things with it,” McCrink said. “And so this is sort of the ultimate validation of that model and that thing that we strive for.”
In the aerospace engineering industry, Herz said she has seen an improvement in gender diversity within her research group. With professors and her advisor, recognizing the importance of representation and making an effort to embrace diversity in their lab groups and in the field, Herz has felt welcomed as a woman in the field.
“I think it’s really important to promote more women pursuing higher education in all engineering fields, but I mean, especially my field of aerospace engineering,” Herz said. “I know it’s slowly getting there. I’m seeing more and more women coming out here to my research lab and the aerospace research center.”
McCrink said that awards like the Amelia Earhart fellowship can increase representation by giving a more diverse range of students opportunities. With recognizing and giving notoriety to these opportunities, it can hopefully invite in others as well, McCrink said.
Since 1938, almost 1,800 Amelia Earhart fellowships have been awarded to about 1,300 women across 80 countries, according to Zonta’s website.
“I do think awards that really support underrepresented populations in engineering are huge,” McCrink said.
Struggling with self-doubt growing-up, Herz said she admired astronauts. She viewed them as smart, incredible people but didn’t feel as if she was intelligent enough to go into aerospace engineering.
However, the field kept calling her name, and she said she learned that she had to find a way back to that passion amongst her pool of doubt.
“I’m really happy that I kind of stuck to my passions and just applied myself and then applied for this fellowship that I didn’t think I would be able to get,” Herz said. “But, you know, sometimes we doubt ourselves a little too much.”
