Finding the unexpected in the everyday.
Shailen P. Bhatt was officially sworn in by Pete Buttigieg, U.S. secretary of transportation, on January 13, 2023, to serve as head of the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA). This inaugural ceremony made Bhatt the 21st administrator of FHWA and the first person of Indian descent to step into that leadership position. The previous month, Bhatt... Continue Reading →
On April 19, 2021, the autonomous NASA helicopter Ingenuity (nicknamed Ginny) lifted off the surface of Mars for what turned out to be a flight of 39.1 seconds. While decidedly brief, this ascent was also historic because it made Ingenuity the first aircraft to carry out a powered, controlled extra-terrestrial flight. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory... Continue Reading →
During his long career as an architect, Gyo Obata achieved international acclaim for the wide range of major buildings that he designed. He was born to Japanese immigrants on February 28, 1923, in San Francisco. His mother Haruko Obata was a well-established floral designer and his father Chiura Obata became a widely known artist. ... Continue Reading →
Swati Mohan is an aerospace engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), a research and development center that is based in Pasadena, California, and managed by the California Institute of Technology. Since 2013, she has been significantly involved in the Mars 2020 mission. A large part of this mission has entailed dispatching both the rover... Continue Reading →
As a longtime businessman and civic leader in the city of Portland in Oregon, Bill Naito became a strong champion of public transportation initiatives in that part of the world. He was born in Portland on September 16, 1925, to Hide and Fukiye Naito, who had immigrated to the United States from Japan in 1912.... Continue Reading →
Mara Huling Langevin made history as the first Asian American female -- as well as the first female of any minority -- to become a U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) aviator. “I never thought about being the first of anything,” she said in a 2021 interview with the USCG’s news service MyCG. “All I wanted to... Continue Reading →
On January 12, 2022, Amitabha “Amit” Bose was confirmed by the U.S. Senate as administrator of the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA). This Senate confirmation by a vote of 68-29 made Bose the first person of South Asian descent to lead FRA, which is an agency within the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT). Bose was born... Continue Reading →
On April 29, 2022, Mary MeleNaite Tufui Likio McCray became the first female U.S. Navy officer of Tongan descent. (Tonga is a Polynesian country and archipelago in the southern Pacific Ocean.) McCray achieved this naval milestone during a commissioning ceremony in which she transitioned from the enlisted position of Boatswain’s Mate 1st class to the... Continue Reading →
Raja Chari, whose considerable flight experience so far has included a journey into space, was born in Milwaukee in 1977 to Sreenivas V. “Shari” Chari and Peggy Egbert. “Shari” Chari, an engineer, had been born in the city of Hyderabad in India in 1942. He and Peggy Egbert met in Milwaukee while he was a... Continue Reading →
In 2020, Josephine Tauoa made U.S. Navy history as the first female American Samoan to be promoted to command master chief petty officer. (An unincorporated territory of the United States, American Samoa is southeast of the independent state of Samoa in the South Pacific Ocean.) As command master chief petty officer (CMC), Tauoa serves as... Continue Reading →
Transportation History 