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ESTHER PUTMAN

  • Brooke Owens Fellow, Class of 2018

  • University of Colorado Boulder, M.S. Aerospace Engineering '21

  • Host Institution: Vulcan

  • Mentor: Kris Lehnhardt

Esther Putman is a graduate student at the University of Colorado at Boulder, pursuing a master’s degree in Aerospace Engineering with a focus in Bioastronautics. After a summer astronomy program in high school, she knew right away that she wanted to pursue a career studying our species' exploration beyond Earth.

She began to explore this passion as an intern with Space Tango, a commercial hardware provider for research conducted on the International Space Station where she worked as a biological research and design intern. She spent the summer of 2017 as an intern in NASA’s Space Life Sciences Training program, where she explored bone marrow stem cell differentiation after exposure to spaceflight stressors to further our understanding of how to prevent astronaut bone density loss in spaceflight.

Esther was selected as a 2018 Brooke Owens Fellow, where she spent a summer as a Space Systems Intern at Vulcan Inc. in Seattle, Washington. There, she worked on utilizing satellite Earth observations to develop monitoring, modeling, and prediction technologies aimed towards addressing large-scale global issues such as illegal fishing activity, poaching of elephants, and coral reef conservation. She was named a 2018 Women in Aerospace Foundation Scholar, a 2018 Astronaut Scholar, and an AIAA Diversity Scholar.

Esther has a strong passion for STEM education and showing students how they can become involved in space exploration. She served as President of the student board for the American Society for Gravitational and Space Research, where she participated in classroom visits and educational curriculum development for teaching space life sciences. Through this position, she also educated policymakers and representatives in Washington, D.C. about the value of research in space, in support of funding for the International Space Station. Esther hopes to use her education and experiences to show the world how access to space impacts life here on Earth.