Jesse W. McCurdy, 2002 Black Engineer of the Year Award winner for Professional Achievement in Government, has been described as an engineer’s engineer. Over a career that has spanned almost four decades, McCurdy has worked on nearly every air-launched weapon flown by the Navy and Marine Corps - sidewinder heat-seeking missiles, tomahawk cruise missiles, the F/A-18 Hornet, the EA6-B prowler antiradar aircraft, the V-22 Osprey, and unmanned aerial vehicles, such as those used in the Gulf War, and those now prowling Afghanistan.
Raised in rural Alabama, Jesse W. McCurdy received his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Howard University in 1966. Then he worked for about a decade in private industry building and testing weapons. He designed hardware and software used to test aircraft electronics and flight systems for the Air Force, developed system-level tests for a guided missile fire control system, checking the readiness and suitability for shipboard mounting. McCurdy was also responsible for design changes to improve fire-control radar for the F-14 Tomcat. Here he worked closely with the Naval Air Systems Command and ultimately joined them in 1976.
More than a decade later, McCurdy rose to the executive ranks. One of a select group of senior executive service rank in the Department of the Navy, he has commanded divisions with hundreds of engineers and scientists, managing more than 72 geographically dispersed teams with an annual budget of several billion dollars.
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Friday, October 28th 2005 at 11:54PM
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