• Brooke Owens Fellow, Class of 2018

• University of Washington, Informatics: Data Science, BS ‘20

• Host Institution: Stratolaunch

• Mentor: Mandy Vaughn

Shannon is an Aerospace Data Engineer at Blue Origin, where she applies data tracking and system health analysis to the sensors and actuators aboard the New Glenn rocket. She graduated Magna Cum Laude from the University of Washington with a Bachelor of Science in Informatics: Data Science. Her love for space exploration and passion for data science merged after years of research and interning at half a dozen companies in the government and private sphere. Her fields of work include space radiation analysis, aerodynamics testing data, predictive telemetry analysis for rockets, architecture automation, and data parsing for satellites.

Shannon first found her passion while on her deployment to Afghanistan in 2014 with the Army National Guard. There, she launched her interest in intelligence analysis and saw what the impact of finding patterns in significant activity could mean for the safety of soldiers on ground. Through data science, she was able to find a purpose that could save lives. She wanted to have a civilian career with the same kind of purpose and design. Once she returned to the United States, she packed her bags and moved from a small town in Texas to Seattle, Washington in the hopes of studying data science at the University of Washington.

Before applying to UW, she wanted to restart her schooling at Seattle Central College. She hadn't been to college in years and wanted to leverage the community college benefits of smaller class sizes, building close teacher relationships, and working with people that had unconventional walks of life like hers.

It was only when she joined SCC's Rocketry Club did she find a way to combine computer programming for data analysis to engineering space exploration. She strived to find more ways data science could improve the way people approached the safety and accuracy of space travel, and how automating analysis on testing data gathered by subject matter experts could be used to find answers at a quicker rate.

This, in turn, brought her to research opportunities on a weather balloon payload for the National Science Foundation, a two-stage nine-engine multi-cluster rocket, and the Husky Satellite DUBSAT-1 with the University of Washington. During this time, she attended internships at NASA Johnson Space Center and NASA Langley Research Center, all before receiving her Associates Degree. In Fall 2017, Shannon reached the goal that she set out for herself three years ago when she transferred into the Informatics Program at the University of Washington.

As a Brooke Owens Fellow, she worked at Stratolaunch as a Systems Engineer. She worked with the Aerodynamics Team building autonomous methods for predicted trajectories to better maximize payload weight, among other projects. Following that opportunity, she worked at NASA Langley Research Center as a Flight Software Engineer Pathways Co-Op on the SAGE-III satellite that's aboard the International Space Station. Thanks to Brooke Owens, she realized her love of innovation in technology was in the private aerospace industry.

She left NASA, and then completed an internship at Ball Aerospace as a Systems Engineer for Mission Analysis, using data science to build better satellite architectures. During these years, Shannon's commitment to activism and outreach garnered numerous awards and scholarships, one of them leading to her selection as the astronaut candidate for Out Astronaut, representing the LGBTQ+ community serving as an openly queer woman in space. For this, she attended the Advanced PoSSUM Space Academy during the Fall of 2019 in Florida as her Phase I training. With future funding, the program will continue into Phase II training, the Applied Astronautics Program at the International Institute for Astronautical Sciences in hopes of conducting a science experiment of a design onboard a private space flight to space.
Shannon finished her Bachelors degree in June 2020.

At this moment, she left the Army National Guard after 8 years in protest to soldiers against civilians during the Summer 2020 demonstrations against police brutality. At Blue Origin, she stays committed to her outreach as the President of the New Ride business resource group for LGBTQ+ to ensure visibility and that resources are equitable regardless of how you identify. Outside of work, she's a mentor and teacher for Girls Who Code, Brooke Owens, Patti Grace Smith Fellowship, a local high school technology club, and GSBA. She ultimately wants to inspire young women and the LGBTQ+ community alike to cultivate their interest in STEM careers because, "when you succeed, you share your notes."