KAYLEIGH DOBSON
Brooke Owens Fellow, Class of 2018
Santa Clara University, Mechanical Engineering, '19
Host Institution: Sierra Nevada Corporation
Mentor: Phil Larson
Pronouns: She/her
Kayleigh Dobson, a graduate of Santa Clara University School of Engineering, has been drawn to space since she was a child. Her grandpa, who worked at Jet Propulsion Laboratory, ignited her love of space and engineering. She loved calling him a "rocket scientist," and always hoped that one day she would be able to call herself a rocket scientist as well.
Throughout her time at Santa Clara University, Kayleigh had opportunities to pursue that childhood goal. During her sophomore and junior year, Kayleigh spent a year working as a satellite operations intern through the Robotic Systems Laboratory at Santa Clara University. She had the opportunity to work on-console during satellite passes, retrieving data from a NASA Ames cube-sat called EcAMSat, which monitored the effect of microgravity on E.coli. During her senior year, she worked at NASA Ames Research Center on a team developing a payload for lunar applications and closed out her work on EcAMSat by writing a Satellite Operations paper.
In addition to internships, Kayleigh was also involved at school as a tour guide for SCU's School of Engineering, a member of both Tau Beta Pi Engineering Society and Pi Tau Sigma Mechanical Engineering Society, and the president of Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority.
For Kayleigh's Brooke Owens internship, she worked as a Systems Engineering Intern at Sierra Nevada Corporation in Louisville, Colorado. She worked on the Dream Chaser spacecraft, a reusable ISS cargo resupply vehicle. Her projects primarily focused on creating functional architecture for the mission, tracing customer and other requirements to spacecraft specifications, and depicting the attitude of the spacecraft at any given point in the mission cycle. Outside of work, Kayleigh enjoyed spending time with the incredible Colorado Brookie community, as well as hiking, rafting, and exploring Boulder.
After graduating in June of 2019, Kayleigh began her first full-time job as a mechanical engineer at Blue Origin. As a part of Blue’s new graduate engineering rotation program, Kayleigh will spend her first year completing three rotations in different business units before joining her permanent team. Kayleigh is incredibly excited for this opportunity to contribute to Blue's vision of millions of people living and working in space, and to become a part of the Seattle Brookie family!