• Brooke Owens Fellow, Class of 2017

• Harvard University, Earth and Planetary Sciences, ‘17

• Host Institution: Bryce Space and Technology

• Mentor: Beth Robinson

Caroline is a Ph.D. student at Columbia University in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences. Caroline is interested in using satellite data, big datasets, and statistical modeling to understand natural hazards, particularly fire activity. Under the mentorship of her advisor Dr. Park Williams, she is currently investigating how climate affects wildfires in the western United States. Between college graduation and her Ph.D., she was a project coordinator at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center/ Science Systems and Applications, Inc. in Greenbelt, MD, where she launched and managed the NASA citizen science project Landslide Reporter.

On the side, she is motivated by her passion to increase access to opportunities in STEM and dedicates her free time to mentoring students and volunteering for outreach and diversity initiatives in the aerospace and Earth science communities. She serves as a member of the Executive Team for the Brooke Owens Fellowship and co-founded SpaceInterns.org, a platform for aerospace-related resources and an opportunities database. She is also an artist who enjoys creating illustrations, comics, and digital designs.

Caroline graduated in May 2017 with an A.B. in Earth & Planetary Sciences and a minor in Environmental Sciences and Public Policy from Harvard University. Her senior thesis research titled, "25 Years of Carbon Exchange and its Factors in the Harvard Forest", received an Honors recommendation. After internships with the Space Studies Board of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine; the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum; and the Joint US-China Collaboration on Clean Energy, Caroline was selected as a member of the inaugural class of Brooke Owens Fellows. As a Brookie, Caroline worked at Bryce Space and Technology, conducting and presenting research on SmallSat market trends, which was published as SmallSats by the Numbers 2018. She also assisted the Business Development team with proposals, research, and the 2017 Start-Up Space report. Caroline has served in many different mentorship, outreach, editor, and design roles as an alumna of the Fellowship – including creating the program’s logo in 2017.

She has been recognized as a NASA FINESST Fellow, a Finalist for the Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans and a Future Space Leader Fellow.