When she was hired by NACA the same year, she became the first woman engineer at the organization, eventually rising to the title of Branch Head and managing several of its wind tunnels.

[4] These requirements were still in place in 1935, when O'Brien would have applied, so she attended Sweet Briar College for two years between 1935 and 1937, then successfully petitioned UVA to gain admission.

[1] The reporter wrote about her while she was in Florida attending an engineering conference at which her paper "Fluorescence, the Light of the Future" won second place among student work.

[2][3][5] She was selected to receive the Algernon Sydney Sullivan Award, which the university gives to two graduating students each year "for excellence of character and service to humanity".

[10][11] Her work had implications for military and commercial flight applications, and she was influential in the production of aircraft design standards that continued to be relevant many years later.

[3] O'Brien married Upshur T. Joyner, a physicist who also worked at NACA/NASA, best known for his contributions at the NASA Langley Landing Loads Dynamics Facility.

[3] Together they had two children: a son named Upshur O'Brien Joyner, who died of leukemia at the age of 47 in 1990, and a daughter, Kate Bailey.