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My name is Zhixian Li, I go by Tim.

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I am a welding engineer with Lockheed Martin

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at NASA's Michoud Assembly Facility.

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As a welding engineer, my responsibility is to develop a robust weld process

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and to make sure it can be smoothly transferred to weld the flight hardware

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in a highest quality for NASA’s space systems.

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The coolest part of my job is that my work is very interesting.

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We face challenging issues at work on a daily basis.

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That makes my job interesting.

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I have been involved in the early development work on friction stir welding since I was hired in at MAF 18 years ago.

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At that time it was a fairly new technology.

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Over the years, I have seen the friction stir welding technology

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has been matured and implemented on the External Tanks’ production and NASA’s future space systems.

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As a part of the team, I feel my effort made a difference.

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After I graduated with my Master degree from the Institute of Metal Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences,

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my dream was to get an advanced education in science and engineering from the west.

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So I worked very hard on my English and applied Universities in the States.

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I was lucky enough to obtain a research assistant scholarship to pursue my Ph.D. degree in Polytechnic School of Engineering at New York University.

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After I graduated with my Ph.D. degree,

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I decided to find a job in the United States

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and landed the current job to work on space systems for NASA.

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My advice for students watching today would be

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study hard on math and sciences and find opportunities to do internships with NASA or other agencies.