Interest in aviation, physics fuels Abigail Poropatich’s career goals

Abigail Poropatich comes from a big aviation family.

Her parents both worked as commercial airline pilots when she was growing up. She began taking flying lessons when she was 17 and is now pursuing her private pilot license.

Poropatich will follow them into the aviation field, but she won’t be in the cockpit. 

Instead, the Clemson University senior who is double majoring in physics and computer science, wants to pursue a career at the intersection of flight and science. One day, she hopes to serve in an administrative government role and influence scientific policies, utilizing her aviation, physics and computer science backgrounds. 

When Poropatich took AP physics in high school, the story of Schrodinger’s cat, a hypothetical thought experiment that illustrated the concept of quantum superposition, triggered her interest in the subject. She loves the idea that physics is everywhere and the basis of all sciences and life. 

Inherent way of thinking

“It is an inherent way of thinking,” she said.

She decided to major in physics, and when she noticed that computer science permeated every aspect of physics, she decided to take the next logical next step — working toward a double major.

Poropatich said faculty at Clemson encourage physics students to join a research group from the start of their first year. She began her college career thinking she wanted to attend medical school and joined a biophysics lab with Associate Professor Hugo Sanabria and Adjunct Professor Joshua Alper. Poropatich studied neural cell behavior and spectroscopy. She presented this research at the Smithsonian Museum of American History as a part of the ACCelerate Smithsonian Festival.

When Poropatich started to shift her focus from the medical field to computer science, her focus within her lab also shifted. Sanabria helped Poropatich begin working on laser acquisition for data transmission using Python. “I was really able to be dynamic within that lab,” Poropatich said. 

As she progressed through her computer science degree, Poropatich began looking into computer interaction research. 

Combining passions

She wanted to find internships that combined her passion for flying and airplanes with her computer science and physics skills. Textron Aviation provided this type of opportunity in a software engineering internship last summer. Textron Aviation is a company that builds everything from private jets and helicopters for military and corporate contracts to small single engine aircraft like the airplanes Poropatich flies. 

Poropatich worked on aircraft systems engineering testing to create a control panel under a U.S. Navy contract for aircraft simulators. The control panel is used by instructors to launch an airplane during simulation training. 

She also spent time in the cockpit of simulation planes and tested all the simulator’s electrical systems to ensure they met standards. One of Poropatich’s favorite parts about the internship was her time spent flying both Citation Longitude and KingAir simulators as well as flying real planes in her free time. 

Poropatich just accepted an offer to work as a technology analyst for Deloitte Government and Public Services after her graduation in December. She also plans to fly on the side and work toward a commercial aircraft license.