“Working on space suits has also been a favorite part of my career so far. The astronauts are amazing people with great stories to tell. Being able to design gear for them and then see it in action on orbit is an honor.”
David Cadogan (B.S.’86, Aircraft Engineering) has loved aircraft for just about as long as he can remember. “I was hooked at around age 10 when I saw the Canadian Snowbirds acrobatic flight team perform,” he recalled. “Nothing like watching jets fly past one another with just a few feet of space between them.”
Today, Cadogan is Director of Engineering and Product Development for ILC Dover, a company that designs and builds structures from textiles, membranes and coated fabrics (or “softgoods”) for a number of markets including aerospace, military, pharmaceutical manufacturing, and infrastructure protection—to name a few. In his role, Cadogan is responsible for working with an engineering team to develop new products.
“Most of the products we make are critical to preserving life, or protect high value assets, so they have to work perfectly or lives could be lost,” Cadogan explained. Products include space suits, respiratory protection devices, blimps/airships, flood protection products, and much more.
Cadogan began working with ILC Dover straight out of college. Initially, he interviewed for a position working on ‘personal protective equipment’-- namely, aircrew gas masks. “We didn’t have the internet in 1986, so we had to read newspaper want ads and search other sources for job opportunities. I found ILC Dover listed in the Aviation Week & Space Technology Magazine’s World Aviation Directory. It said they were an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle manufacturer (known as drones now), so I applied since I was working on them at WMU.”
As Cadogan notes, the aerospace industry was shrinking in 1986, but ILC was growing, so they called him for an interview and he ended up speaking with the president of the company.
“We had a good talk and he asked me if I was interested in working on aircrew gas masks to which I said ‘not really--what a bad interview response! --however, he said, ‘OK, how about space suits?’ I think it was the look of excitement on my face that got me the job.”
Cadogan became a systems engineer and spent his first few years working on spacesuits, aircrew equipment, and airships. At first, he was mostly designing and running tests for products designed by other engineers but after only a year Cadogan became a design engineering and “the real fun began.”
And fun it was. “The coolest thing I have done -- literally -- is spend 10 days testing a deployable habitat in Antarctica on a joint NASA and NSF program. We designed the structure, built it, and then spent time testing it Antarctica.”
From a high level standpoint, Cadogan enjoys that much of what he does has a positive impact on the world, whether it’s supporting space exploration, protecting critical infrastructure from the effects of climate change, or helping reduce the costs of healthcare through the creation of advanced pharmaceutical manufacturing equipment.
“At a more detailed level I am fortunate that I have been able to work with some very dedicated people at ILC. I am always learning from them as we attack the compelling problems we address such as how to design airbags to help land a spacecraft on Mars, or how to protect healthcare workers from Ebola, or how to plug a damaged under-river transit tunnel from flooding an entire cities subway system,” Cadogan said. “I also get to interface with some pretty amazing people in government, industry, and academia, as we help solve problems with them or for them.”
In his spare time, Cadogan enjoys photography and hiking with his family—two hobbies that often go hand-in-hand, noting that if photography hadn’t become digital he’d be broke by now. He feels thankful for his professors at WMU and the solid foundation they gave him to work with, namely Dr. Art Hoadley, professor emeritus of mechanical and aeronautical engineering, and Dr. Esther Shafer, who at the time was a doctoral student in psychology.
“I spent more time studying than I care to admit. However, I did attend a lot of football games, made some good friends, and was involved in a few engineering related activities with national societies,” Cadogan recalled. “The most interesting activity I participated in was supporting the creation of, and participation in, the international Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) Remotely Piloted Vehicle Cargo Aircraft Competition, which eventually morphed into the SAE Aero Design competition still being held every year. SAE does more than cars, but not flying cars…yet. This turned out to be a good thing because it helped me land my first job.”
Cadogan has sound advice for current students or recent graduates of engineering: Be intellectually curious and make connections.
“Bottom line: find a way to work on something you enjoy so work isn’t work, it’s fun. I was lucky that I fell into something I enjoyed right out of school. It doesn’t happen that way for most people. If you don’t find it right away, keep looking. It will happen if you put effort in the search.”
Cadogan is pictured above at the McMurdo Base in Antarctica and wearing the ILC Dover I-Suit (he is on the right).