Dunne Working as CAPCOM in mission control.
MATTHEWDUNNE/COURTESY
By Matthew Schule, Staff Writer
“You know, I feel like a lot of my success, almost all of it, has been built on the great time I had at Manhattan,” Matthew Dunne ‘12,’13, a lead flight testing engineer at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, said.
From Houston, Dunne explained the journey of his career. He told The Quadrangle that he needed to wake up early the next morning in order to talk to some individuals who are astronauts working aboard the International Space Station, floating somewhere above England.
Dunne has been working at NASA for nearly 10 years now, but before he set his eyes on those satellites in the sky, his first inspiration came from the silver screen. As a kid, Dunne remembered seeing the 1995 movie Apollo 13.
“The movie really stuck out to me, not just because it was a true story, but because it also really digs into what the engineers and the team are doing on the ground,” Dunne said. “It showed that when things don’t go to plan, you need all hands on deck.”
The value of teamwork is something Dunne began to admire early in his career, and his time at Manhattan College helped him work towards making what he cared about a part of his everyday life.
“Teamwork is something that I really value, and the close-knit community at Manhattan [College] really fostered the values I have today,” Dunne said.
Dunne explained that after getting his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering, it was a “seamless transition” into getting his master’s degree in science thanks to a five-year graduate program Manhattan College offered him towards the end of his undergrad.
In an email from alumnus Thomas Wigand, a friend of Dunne, he talked about Dunne’s success at such an infamous company.
“Most people cannot say they know someone that works for NASA,” Wigand wrote. “Luckily I can. I met Matt sophomore year through mutual friends, which led to us being roommates junior year.”
In his junior year at MC, Dunne took an internship at Skanska Construction Company, and helped do interface maintenance on a tunnel-boring machine nearly 100 feet underneath the city streets and skyscrapers of New York City. At the time, the machine was digging away a massive hole, which is known today as the Second Avenue subway line.
After this, Dunne would get his next internship at NASA as part of the Undergraduate Student Research Program. He was selected as a member of the NASA Student Ambassador Virtual Community Program due to his effective communication, leadership and teamwork skills. It was this internship that would lead to Dunne working full-time at NASA following the completion of his master’s degree.
Wigand also said that he would get to see Dunne while he was working at NASA.
“I was able to go down to Houston and visit him at work in the control center which was awesome,” Wigand said.
Dunne started at NASA in the Flight Dynamics Division doing attitude analysis, determining the correct orientation for spacecraft headed to the ISS. He’s now moved on to a position in Program Integration for the Artemis Campaign, NASA’s plan for, “Exploring the Moon for scientific discovery, technology advancement, and to learn how to live and work on another world as we prepare for human missions to Mars,” according to nasa.gov.
Dunne told The Quadrangle he still works on the operational side of things, taking on the “Capcom role of talking to the astronauts for when they’re on the space station.”
He’s managed to secure these roles through hard work and dedication, offering a unique perspective to them thanks to his efforts in attending and recently graduating from the United States Air Force Test Pilot School. There, he learned the ins and outs of testing aircraft and ensuring their safety for the humans who will be traveling in them. Dunne has taken this knowledge back to NASA and is now using it to help them one day send humanity beyond the moon, and all the way to Mars.
Although he’s moved on to helping humanity step into the stars, he has not forgotten where he made his first step. Dunne said that he’s still a big fan of Manhattan, and even named one of his dogs Jasper.