Rowan Palmer

• Brooke Owens Fellow, Class of 2020

• Yale University, Mechanical Engineering, ‘21

• Host Institution: Lockheed Martin Space

• Mentor: Carol Lane

Rowan Palmer is a Mechanical Engineering major at Yale University. Growing up with a love of math, science, and art, she found engineering and innovation to be the perfect intersection of the three while participating on her high school robotics team.

Before heading to college, Rowan spent multiple summers interning at Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Manufacturing Demonstration Facility, where she assisted in Small Scale Metal and Large Scale Polymer Additive Manufacturing research. Last summer, she interned with Stanley Black & Decker’s Agile Innovation Group designing new power tools and products. Both of these experiences helped foster her love for design and hands-on building, and she looks forward to applying those passions to developing technology for space exploration.

Wanting to continue hands-on engineering while in college, she joined the Yale Undergraduate Aerospace Association (YUAA), where her work on the Tiltrotor RC Aircraft project team and the Rocket Engineering project team helped her discover her fascination with aerospace engineering. She is now the Co-President of YUAA, where she builds rockets, shares her experiences with team members, and continues to learn from them as well.

Outside of engineering, she fills her time training and competing in NCAA Gymnastics, tutoring engineering students in calculus, giving campus tours, studying history, and doing photography.

As a Brooke Owens Fellow, Rowan will spend Summer 2020 interning at Lockheed Martin Space in Denver, CO.