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Neha Sangana

  • Brooke Owens Fellow, Class of 2020

  • Johns Hopkins University, Engineering Mechanics, ‘22

  • Host Institution: Bryce Space and Technology

  • Mentor: Kris Lehnhardt

Neha is a sophomore at Johns Hopkins University studying Engineering Mechanics with a concentration in aerospace while on the premedical track.

Since she got her first telescope in 2nd grade, Neha has known that she wanted to grow up to do space. Throughout high school and college, she grew interested in both engineering and medicine but wasn’t sure how to reconcile the two. Until a couple of years ago when she interned at NASA JSC, “space doctor” didn’t seem like a realistic goal, but now she is set on pursuing a future in aerospace medicine. She hopes that her love for building things and passion for healing people will complement each other.

She is a Team Lead for JHU SEDS, where she organizes regular star parties and telescope training for fellow space enthusiasts and works to build a CubeSat for the rocketry team. Neha also works as a clinical research assistant at the Johns Hopkins Neuropsychiatry clinic, with a research focus on neurodegenerative disease. She serves as Donations Chair for Global Medical Brigades, where she organizes fundraisers for biannual trips to rural towns in Honduras. These trips are not voluntourism – her team collaborates with and learns from community leaders and local doctors in order to help them engineer long term, lasting solutions for health disparities that the communities themselves can sustain.

Outside of engineering and medicine, Neha spends her time writing stories as an editor for the JHU News-Letter, organizing events with the Hindu Students Council and learning new choreo for her dance team, Blue Jay Bhangra.

She is most inspired by the versatility of the space industry. Neha hopes to make the aerospace industry more accessible so that future aerospace enthusiasts can more easily explore how they fit into this diverse industry.

As a Brooke Owens Fellow, Neha will be interning at Bryce Space and Technology in Washington, DC.