Bio
Captain Mikaela D. Dimaapi is an instructor of Mechanical Engineering at the United States Air Force Academy. She instructs the Fundamentals of Mechanics course.
Captain Dimaapi commissioned in 2019 out of the United States Air Force Academy. She graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering and a minor in Spanish.
Following her commission, Captain Dimaapi attended graduate school at the Air Force Institute of Technology in residence at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio to study Systems Engineering, focusing on information systems. Her research investigated dynamic data collection and analysis for Unmanned Aircraft Systems. She was also inducted into the Air Force Institute of Technology Chapter of the Tau Beta Pi honor society.
Captain Dimaapi previously served as the Deputy Flutter Team Lead for the Air Force SEEK EAGLE Office at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida. She was responsible for recommending store carriage envelopes through flutter analysis and flutter flight test while managing the capacity of the other flutter engineers on her team. Her technical leadership led to increasing existing weapon carriage capacity and reliability for thousands of F-16 combat configurations.
Education
Master of Science, Systems Engineering, Air Force Institute of Technology (2019-2021)
Bachelor of Science, Mechanical Engineering, United States Air Force Academy (2015-2019)
Professional Experience
Instructor of Mechanical Engineering, Department of Mechanical Engineering, United States Air Force Academy, Colorado (2024-present)
Deputy Flutter Team Lead, Air Force SEEK EAGLE Office, Eglin Air Force Base, Florida (2023-2024)
Flutter Engineer, Air Force SEEK EAGLE Office, Eglin Air Force Base, Florida (2021-2024)
Research Officer, 711th Human Performance Wing, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio (2021)
MS Student, Department of Systems Engineering and Management, Air Force Institute of Technology, Wright Patterson AFB, Ohio (2019-2021)
Honors & Awards
Air and Space Commendation Medal (2024)
Group Company Grade Officer of the Year (2023)
Group Company Grade Officer of the Quarter (2023)
Research and Scholarly Interests
Test & Evaluation
Explainable Artificial Intelligence
Publications
Dimaapi, M.D., Engle, R.D.L., Langhals, B.T., “A Dynamic Data and Information Processing Model for Unmanned Aircraft Systems,” Advances in Data Science and Information Engineering, Springer, 2021, pp. 859-863.