In 1939 Kitty O'Brien Joyner, the first woman to graduate from the University of Virginia's engineering program, was hired as the first woman to work as an engineer at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, now known as NASA's Langley Research Center. The first women engineer hired by NACA, Kitty’s work in the electronic operations of wind tunnels would be crucial to the Allies win in the approaching WW II, propelling modern air travel and laying the groundwork for supersonic flight and the space age. While Kitty Joyner was the first female engineer hired by NACA, physicist Pearl Irma Young had been was the backbone of research work since the late ‘20s.