• Brooke Owens Fellow, Class of 2022

• The University of Texas at Austin, Aerospace Engineering, ‘22

• Host Institution: SpaceX

• Executive Mentor: Nicole Stott

• Brookie Mentor: Kinjal Ruecker

Azzurra Demarie is a senior at The University of Texas at Austin, pursuing a major in Aerospace Engineering with a minor in Russian. She grew up in Turin, Italy, and later moved to Texas in 2011. Her passion for space began at a young age when her grandmother would teach her about astronomy. Early on she learned to find the planets and the moon when looking through her grandfather’s old telescope. Azzurra particularly enjoyed creating things from scratch and always being hands-on. When deciding on a career that would satisfy both her hobbies and passions, it was clear she wanted to pursue Aerospace Engineering.

Azzurra worked incredibly hard to gain her place in the aerospace industry. After initially being denied the opportunity to pursue aerospace engineering coming out of high school, Azzurra spent her first two years of college working to transfer into the Cockrell School of Engineering. Her determination to continue following her dreams allowed her to later be accepted into the Aerospace Engineering major and she went on to pursue a Russian minor to continue challenging herself. 

Azzurra has been involved in multiple organizations and projects at her school while pursuing her education. She was part of the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Austin (UAVA) organization, where she and her peers worked together to develop a UAV with camera gimbaling abilities. She has also been a test and fluids team leader in the Texas Rocket Engineering Laboratory (TREL), and is currently working as a member of the Fluid Systems team, where she is designing and upgrading the piping and instrumentation that is to be used on the small rocket the lab is planning to launch to the edge of space. 

Along with the engineering organizations, Azzurra has been involved in the Woman in Engineering Program as a mentor to younger students starting their undergraduate career in Aerospace Engineering. She is particularly interested in helping out younger women in aerospace find their niche while also being their friend and supporter as they work through some of the toughest and most challenging years of their educational career. Azzurra is also a member of the Women in Aerospace for Leadership and Development organization, where she has participated in an intern panel discussing her internship experience and given advice to students who are starting their internship interviews.

As a young engineer, Azzurra has had the opportunity to work alongside extremely talented and welcoming engineers at SpaceX, where she was able to nail down her favorite parts of the engineering process. She worked on the Dragon Integration and Test team during Summer 2021, where she was able to help push the build for the capsules launching Crew-3 and Inspiration-4 (I-4) to space. Everyday felt like an adventure and that is why she chose to come back to SpaceX for her second internship Summer 2022. 

Azzurra will be interning with host company SpaceX on the Dragon Propulsion team during Summer 2022.