{"id":1368,"date":"2025-07-31T09:52:55","date_gmt":"2025-07-30T21:52:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/iypt.org.nz\/?page_id=1368"},"modified":"2025-07-31T18:50:29","modified_gmt":"2025-07-31T06:50:29","slug":"accelerate-otis-rea","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/iypt.org.nz\/?page_id=1368","title":{"rendered":"Accelerate – Otis Rea"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Otis<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A Young Physicist’s Journey to Aerospace <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Otis Rea, the intense debates and strategic negotiations during high school physics competitions prepared him well<\/strong> for his current role as a spacecraft operations engineer at Dawn Aerospace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dawn<\/a> is in the business of developing spaceplanes, says Otis, a member of the New Zealand team that competed at the IYPT in Singapore in 2017. \u201cMy role is primarily to ensure that our flight operations occur safely. This involves technical aspects such as risk assessments, analysis, and reports as well as non-technical aspects such as stakeholder engagement.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe two big components of my role are working with Dawn’s internal teams to design and implement safety mitigations, and representing Dawn to external stakeholders like the Civil Aviation Authority and Space Agency who are the regulators for our operations. Dawn is a pretty small organisation so I’ve also been involved in lots of other disciplines such as flight test, systems engineering and software.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA lot of aviation rules aren’t written with a spaceplane in mind, so we have to work out with the regulator what is appropriate, and what is not. It’s often a matter of figuring out why a particular rule exists – what is the intent behind it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wielding a powerful tool <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

His unrelenting curiosity and constant questioning are inextricably linked to one of his favourite subjects from way back. \u201cPhysics is based on trying to understand ‘why’ things occur in the manner that they do,\u201d says Otis, who has a degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Canterbury.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thus, if he were to teach a concept in physics, he would focus on trying to understand the ‘why’ in everything. \u201cAsking ‘why’ is a really powerful tool for focusing on the things that matter. And you should be willing to check if your explanation of ‘why’ something is happening is correct too, another fundamental physics concept!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Otis is now based in the coastal seaport of Sligo, in the northwest coast of Ireland, where he continues to work remotely for Dawn. Just before leaving New Zealand, Otis led a project to enable Dawn to fly from the T\u0101whaki National Aerospace Center. <\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Otis<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis is pretty exciting as the runway is much closer to Christchurch than our previous operating location in Glentanner Aerodrome, and so will massively increase the speed of our design\/build\/test flight iterations. The first Dawn Mk-II Aurora flight from \u03a4\u0101whaki should be happening very soon.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where It All Began: The Teachers Who Sparked a Career Direction <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Otis credits two teachers in Wellington High School – Murray Chisholm and Kerry Parker – for nurturing his love for physics. He met them during trials for one of the junior physics teams. \u201cThey were great at getting students to do project based learning, which I think really just encourages people to foster a sense of curiosity and try to understand what causes the natural phenomena that they see.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though Otis now confidently represents organisations in discussions with external groups, it wasn’t long ago that public speaking and presentations filled him with dread. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI recall that the first time I gave a presentation to a problem in JYPT (a predecessor competition to IYPT), I nearly fainted from nerves during the question phase. At the time I had little to no experience in public speaking, and I lacked confidence.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At IYPT, two years later, \u201cI had a lot more experience under my belt,\u201d says Otis. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI remember being the opposition to the Australian team in one round. The contrast to when I had just started physics tournaments was pretty stark – the confidence I had gained allowed me to present my arguments in a much more convincing manner. It’s much easier to think on the spot when you aren’t about to faint too!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"The<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

For those considering a career in STEM, Otis advises: \u201cTake up opportunities where you can. If you really like the technical side, don’t forget to learn how to collaborate as nearly every project outside university requires teamwork. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLearning how to communicate your ideas is as important as having good ideas in the first place. Good ideas won’t get implemented if you don’t sell them to your team!\u201d – written by <\/em>Divina Paredes<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Young Physicist’s Journey to Aerospace  For Otis Rea, the intense debates and strategic negotiations during high school physics competitions prepared him well for his current role as a spacecraft operations engineer at Dawn Aerospace. Dawn is in the business of developing spaceplanes, says Otis, a member of the New Zealand team that competed at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1368","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iypt.org.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iypt.org.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iypt.org.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iypt.org.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iypt.org.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1368"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/iypt.org.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1368\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1397,"href":"https:\/\/iypt.org.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1368\/revisions\/1397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iypt.org.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}