Sandy Seale received a bachelor’s degree in engineering from Princeton University and a master’s and PhD in engineering from MIT, where she was the first woman to receive a doctorate in the department.

She held programming positions at a local software company and the US Navy as summer jobs. While in college, she worked as an aerospace engineer for RCA Astro. Her doctoral work was supported by a Centennial Fellowship from Exxon.

Following a year of teaching at MIT, she moved to Santa Barbara with her husband Eric and took a postdoctoral position at UCSB with Prof. Ralph Archuleta, working in seismology and geophysics. With Dr. Jamie Steidl, she managed the Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation at the Earth Research Institute of UCSB.

Sandy has served on the boards of the Montessori Center School and the Land Trust for Santa Barbara. In 2007, with a group of parents, she established the Dos Pueblos Engineering Academy Foundation to support the engineering program and raise funds for a new facility. The organization continues to grow with increasing numbers of students, another new facility, and over 50% enrollment of women.

Ten years ago, Sandy left her technical career to pursue fundraising for science. She is the Director of Development at the Las Cumbres Observatory, where she works to bring in resources for engineering and research in astronomy, and hosts outreach events in Santa Barbara including Astronomy on Tap.