The Department of Aerospace Engineering at Texas A&M University welcomes three new members to its Aerospace Engineering Advisory Board: Whitney Holt ’01, Stephanie Muñiz Murphy ’00 and William (Bill) R. Wheeler ’70.
Whitney Holt ’01
Whitney Holt is a Product Development Team Lead at Gulfstream Aerospace. She supports their Lab Test organization with a testing strategy centered around design, build, and test for many of the current aircraft simulation testing labs and future testing needs for Gulfstream.
The Lab Test organization supports 19 different aircraft simulation labs designed to support all the Gulfstream programs and fleet, including labs such as the Integrated Test Facility, Iron Bird, and System Integration Bench. The simulation labs allow engineers to test their aircraft system integrated with other real aircraft systems, all without physically leaving the ground, by interacting with an actual flight deck, aircraft equipment and screens that give the pilot visual cues that they are flying. The goal of the testing she does is to facilitate aircraft design, build and test to obtain FAA certification for those programs.
Holt has worked in many capacities at Boeing and Gulfstream, and she has concentrated on Simulation and Flight Test for many types of aircraft in the defense, commercial, and private industries. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Aerospace Engineering from Texas A&M and a Master of Business Administration from Georgia Southern University.
Holt is passionate about sharing the advantages of a STEM career. She has served as the Intern Steering Chair at Gulfstream for four years and has served her community through the local chapter of the Society for Women Engineers (SWE) for the past 14 years. Holt and the SWE outreach team started Girls Engineer It Day, which is currently in its 12th year and has over 300 participants from grades 4-12. It is supported by over 90 volunteers, including local STEM professionals. Holt finds joy in those ah-ha moments others have when they learn something new, or when she learns something new and passes that along to others!
Her most notable awards are the regional SWE Diamond Award and the STEM Change Agent Award in Savannah, Georgia. She also holds a Pinnacle award for internal technical achievements in savings of time and millions of dollars for Gulfstream.
Stephanie Muñiz Murphy ’00
Stephanie Murphy is the principal owner, CEO and Executive Chairman of the Board of Aegis Aerospace, Inc., an advanced space and technology company formed in 2021 by combining MEI Technologies, Inc. and Alpha Space Test and Research Alliance, LLC. Aegis Aerospace provides technical and management services in engineering, integration and testing, space access, modeling and simulation, and information technology/cybersecurity, as well as commercial space access and science research access in the space environment. They use a privately owned laboratory at the International Space Station (ISS), which is also the ISS’s first woman-owned laboratory. A second laboratory was recently delivered for commercial research use on the lunar surface, and a third is in development.
She is the Founder of Alpha Space Test and Research Alliance, LLC, founded in 2015, which was the first company to sign a Reimbursable Commercial Use Space Act Agreement for the International Space Station, enabling turn-key commercial commerce services in low Earth orbit. She currently serves on the Board of Directors for Space Center Houston, the Board of Managers for AM Biotechnologies, LLC and Diosa Procurement, LLC, and is a Past President of the Board of Directors for the Aggie Women Network. She is an ambassador to Leadership Texas, a member of the Johnson Space Center Joint Leadership Team, a Houston Council member of the non-profit GirlStart, and a Founding Board Member and Co-Chair for the Bay Area Chapter of the Greater Houston Women’s Chamber of Commerce. She is a fierce advocate for women in STEM, an active spearker at conferences and universities, a featured guest on several podcasts, and a mentor for students of all ages.
Most recently in 2024, Murphy was appointed to the Executive Committee of the Texas Aerospace Research and Space Economy Consortium (TARSEC) by Governor Greg Abbott, tasked with identifying research recommendations that strengthen Texas’ leadership in civil, commercial, and military aerospace activity.
Murphy holds an Executive Master of Business Administration degree from Texas A&M. She was awarded NASA’s Exceptional Technology Achievement Medal and nationally recognized by Women in Aerospace as the Leadership Award recipient in 2019. Great Minds in STEM, HENAAC awarded her Entrepreneur of the Year in 2020 and the Houston Business Journal recognized her in their Women Who Mean Business Awards in 2022. Aegis Aerospace has been recognized in Latino Leaders Magazine as one of the largest Latino-owned companies in the U.S.
William (Bill) R. Wheeler ’70
William (Bill) R. Wheeler is actively retired. Before his retirement, he was the Vice President of CD-adapco and was one of its four founding partners. CD-adapco began in 1980 as an engineering services firm that specialized in deploying computational simulations to accelerate and improve the product development process of mechanical and industrial equipment. It was a pioneer in introducing this technology into industry, particularly in the automotive, gas turbine, marine, and energy markets. CD-adapco released its first commercial computational fluid analysis (CFD) software in 1987. When it was sold to Siemens in 2016, it was the largest privately held commercial CFD supplier in the world.
At CD-adapco, Wheeler concentrated on the engineering services division of the business and was the co-manager/director of the structural analysis and heat transfer group until 2008. After that, he was primarily involved in the company's business development activities and concentrated on extending CD-adapco’s software and services into the life sciences, oil and gas, chemical processing, electronics, and manufacturing markets.
Before founding CD-adapco, Wheeler was a structural engineer at General Dynamics in Fort Worth and McDonnell Douglas in St. Louis. He was also a nuclear heat transfer/stress engineer at Westinghouse in Pittsburgh and EDS Nuclear in New York. Wheeler has an Associate of Science from South Plains College, a Bachelor of Science in Aerospace Engineering from Texas A&M and a Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University. He is a member of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, SAE International, and the American Society for Microbiology.
Currently, he is an angel investor and consultant to the start-up company AWE Technologies, which is developing breakthrough solutions using ultrasonics and electromagnetics.
After he retired, he and his wife Sandy formed a family charitable foundation and are pursuing philanthropic endeavors that fit its mission statement: “To act as a catalyst for the betterment of society by promoting education, innovation, conservation and social justice.”