About

As a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow pursuing her Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering at Penn State (expected May 2025), Autumn Deitrick combines an artist’s mindset with an engineer’s precision. Her research spans diverse fields, including creativity in engineering education, mangrove forest dynamics, and watershed modeling, resulting in three first-author publications and multiple presentations. She is passionate about addressing complex environmental and social challenges through interdisciplinary collaboration and stakeholder engagement, bridging technical and social perspectives to inform policy and advance sustainable solutions.

Born and raised in Central Pennsylvania, surrounded by streams, Autumn was captivated by the ever-changing riverine landscapes around her. Determined to uncover the mechanisms driving these environmental transformations, she earned her B.S. in Civil Engineering at Penn State and her S.M. in Civil and Environmental Engineering through the Massachusetts Institute of Technology – Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Joint Program.

Autumn sees water as nature’s artist, sculpting landscapes through erosion and deposition, a theme she explored in her experimental environmental fluid mechanics research during her B.S. and S.M. studies. Water and flowing elements are also central to her artwork, where she uses mixed media to create surreal images that seamlessly blend her inner and outer worlds.