Amy Bilton

I spent my early years on a small pig farm near Shetland, Ontario, Canada.  It was here that I developed my love for mathematics, understanding how the world works, and getting my hands dirty.  I was very lucky to have awesome parents that supported my interests, even when they often involved me playing with water and spilling it all over the floor.  I guess some things never change.

I went to Euphemia Central Elementary School for the first 9 years of my education.  It was a small school, approximately 115 students total, but we had some great teachers.  I was lucky enough to have my own aunt as my first ever teacher.  It was a great school, but it had to close due to funding cutbacks in recent years.  My old school now sits abandoned next to farmers fields and grain bins.

For my high school education, I attended LCCVI in Petrolia, Ontario.  As you might of guessed by its name, Petrolia is an oil town.  It's actually where they first discovered oil in North America, and as a result is a beautiful town with lots of gorgeous old Victorian buildings.  The high school was also well funded, had a great reputation and drew students from a large area.  I was one of those students that came from outer reaches of the district and spent hours each day traveling to and from school.  It was definitely worth it, as it was here that I developed my love of physics and prepared for my future challenges. 

I moved from the farm to the city and started my undergraduate education at the University of Toronto in the Engineering Science program.  My time at UofT opened a whole new world to me.  I became friends with people from places I'd never even heard of and learned about things that I didn't even think were possible.  I had always loved math and science, and suddenly I surrounded by all of these people who felt the same way.  I felt at home!

The course work was rigorous and exhausting, but I still decided that I needed to do something more.  During the second year of my degree, I became involved with different extracurricular design projects on campus.  The most rewarding and exciting project that I became involved with was the solar car.  So much so that I spent the majority of my waking hours during my third and forth year in the solar car shop.  It was a great opportunity to experience with my own hands and eyes what we were learning in class.  The problem solving and hands on skills that I learned in that shop have been invaluable in my research and helped to form the vision of my work going forward.

After finishing my undergraduate degree at the University of Toronto in 2004, I headed south for my masters at MIT.   My philosophy of combining cutting edge theoretical work with hands on practical work fit right in at MIT.  I completed my degree in the Field and Space Robotics Laboratory working on shape and parameter estimation of large space structures.  I had the opportunity to develop computational algorithms and to design and build the system to test them out.  It was a fantastic opportunity and I learned a lot, but I wasn't sure if a PhD was meant for me and I decided to head back to the Great White North to test out the job market.