Lea Molnar is Dandelions' Aeronautical Engineer who overlooks the aero, mechanical, and electrical side of the Gyrochute project and ensures that all of the different components of the Gyrochute can come together.

After a high-school field trip to NASA's space-camp ignited her passion for space tech and sparked the goal of visiting the international space station, Lea Molnar joined the Dandelion team as an Aerospace Engineer whilst completing her last two years of Aeronautical Engineering studies at the University of Sydney.

In her work at Dandelions, Lea is heavily involved in the research and development of the “Gyrochute", a patent-pending, slow descent technology used in safely delivering payloads to the ground.

With the highly interactive design processes, her everyday work is constantly changing, and you will almost never find her in the same place two days in a row. Some days she spends her time using Computer Aided Design (CAD) software for designing and modelling Gyrochute components, other days she spends her time rapidly prototyping and manufacturing various components in the workshop.

This is usually followed by days out in the field, testing the flight dynamics and electronics, post-processing that data, and reiterating and simulating design changes through the use of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). Lea has said that an overarching part of her work throughout this entire process is focusing on integration engineering to ensure that the aero, mechanical and electrical components will be able to come together as intended within the final design.

During her studies at USYD Lea was involved in many extracurricular activities & projects, such as the vampire restoration project, SWAE and workshop composite work which helped her develop the technical and practical skills that she has been able to bring to Dandelions.

Lea is convinced that the Gyrochute will be an exciting new technology that has the potential to play a huge role in both the emergency service and space sector. She is excited to be part of realizing and developing this technology from the ground up and seeing which heights it will reach in the future.