AlexGartner.jpg

ALEXANDRA GARTNER

  • Brooke Owens Fellow, Class of 2018

  • Yale University, Electrical Engineering, ‘19

  • Host Institution: HawkEye 360

  • Mentor: Debra Facktor

Alex is currently working as a systems engineer at HawkEye 360, a start-up which independently identifies and geolocates sources of radio frequency emissions. As a Brooke Owens Fellow, Alex interned at HawkEye 360 as a Signal Processing intern, helping to develop, test, and simulate signal processing algorithms and software in preparation for the company’s launch of their first satellite cluster.

Alex graduated from Yale University in 2019 with a B.S. in Electrical Engineering. Since she was a child, Alex has dreamed of traveling amongst the stars. Her most prized possession is her telescope, which served as her trusty companion on many a cold winter’s night spent in her backyard as a kid exploring the cosmos and delighting in every nebula, galaxy, and cluster she identified. By the time she graduated from high school, Alex had already interned at NASA's Langley Research Center as a Virginia Aerospace Science and Technology Scholar, where she worked alongside NASA engineers and scientists to help design a human mission to Mars. It was here that Alex's passion was given direction and she became dedicated to helping humanity through space-based research and technology.

Outside of classes, Alex was a member of the Yale Undergraduate Aerospace Association, where she helped design and construct Yale’s first CubeSat, and where she worked on the Radio-Controlled Solar Plane. Alex additionally worked as a STEM recruiter to bring the next class of science and engineering students to Yale and also helped re-establish the IEEE chapter at Yale which had previously gone extinct. Alex is a recipient of the inaugural Patti Grace Smith Scholarship from the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, for which she was recognized at the 21st Annual FAA Commercial Space Transportation Conference in Washington, DC.

Alex believes science is informed by the arts and derives great satisfaction indulging her creative side. At Yale, Alex enjoyed singing as a member of Something Extra, Yale’s premier all-women's a cappella group and has performed at Carnegie Hall and in cities across the United States and Europe. In her final year at school, Alex sang with Yale’s all-senior a cappella group, Whim ’n Rhythm, culminating in a 2.5 month World Tour with the group, singing and performing for a wide variety of different audiences around the globe. In her free time, Alex expresses her love for science by applying what she has learned to write science fiction stories..