• Brooke Owens Fellow, Class of 2024

• University of Houston, Honors Mechanical Engineering, ‘25

• Host Institution: United Launch Alliance

• Mentor: Michelle Murray

• Brookie Mentor: Amber Porteous

Carolina Vergara is a junior first-gen Honors Engineering student at the University of Houston, majoring in Mechanical Engineering. As the daughter of Mexican immigrants, family unity, cultural roots, and core values are paramount to her. Growing up in rural South Texas fueled her love for the natural world and space. Joining the FIRST Tech Challenge Robotics Club in high school sparked her engineering journey. Carolina founded the first all-girls robotics team, won accolades such as the Collins Aerospace Innovation Award, and mentored them post-graduation. Additionally, she was also a part of the NASA High School Aerospace Scholar (HAS) program hosted at the Johnson Space Center. Passionate about STEM, she volunteered in STEM camps, mentored K-12 students interested in NASA HAS, and supported her community through the Vannie Cook Childhood Cancer Clinic and Salvation Army. During the pandemic, Carolina contributed to designing a compact ventilator that would alleviate the hospital ventilator crisis, focusing on redesigning a CPAP face mask to increase oxygenation in COVID patients and reduce the risk of infection to medical professionals. She also worked on innovative projects like a portable cleaning system for menstrual stains through the FemTech (+) Innovation Challenge. In the Google Hardware Product Sprint, she invented a transportable, impact-proof smart speaker that educates children about space, fabricated through Fusion360 CAD software and interfacing Google Cloud AIY Voice API with the smart speakers’ Raspberry Pi using Python and Linux to function with Google Assistant. As a first-generation student, she actively seeks professional development through conferences for Latinas in engineering and mentorship programs. Currently, she is part of the AIAA competitive rocketry project team, Space City Rocketry. As a Recovery sub-team member, she engineered the CAD solution for an optimized parachute rig using Fusion360 CAD modeling and updated the parachute deployment diagrams. Attending the Spaceport America Cup (SAC) international rocketry competition, she executed the single bay dual deployment recovery system assembly and reinforced packing methodology. Launched and recovered successfully their 30k commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) solid motor rocket, surpassing expectations with an apogee of 35,869 feet, exceeding pre-flight estimates. After SAC, she was elected to be the Recovery sub-team lead where she established an engineering notebook to ensure knowledge retention and created workshop-style labs that encouraged team unity through hands-on activities that applied engineering principles. Seeing her leadership ability, the team promoted her to be the Chief Engineer of Space City Rocketry (SCR). Now, she is administering SCR during a 2-year plan to go to the Spaceport America Cup 2025 competition with a 10k Student Researched and Developed (SRAD) solid motor rocket. Organizing all technical aspects of the 53-person team such as recruitment, project delegation, technical papers management, design approval, leading team meetings, budgeting, fundraising, supervising testing, and manufacturing operations across all sub-teams (Analysis, Avionics, Media, Payload, Propulsion, Recovery, and Structures) has granted her the unique perspective of understanding and loving the intricacies of the rocket development process. So far her favorite experience as Chief Engineer has been formulating a boot camp for new members that serves as an introduction to competitive rocketry and she enjoys seeing this spark their interest in the extraordinary world of rocketry. Beyond academics, Carolina loves to immerse herself in music, dancing, family time, rocket launches, astrophotography, and collecting space-themed accessories. Carolina is thrilled and extremely grateful to be selected for the Brooke Owens Fellowship, Class of 2024, and to serve as an Engineering Intern at ULA! She can’t wait to connect with like-minded individuals, network with and support fellow Brookies, and get a chance to be involved with the intern rocket program at ULA! She is excited about the personal and professional growth this internship will offer, propelling her closer to her dream of becoming an aerospace engineer, contributing and actively shaping the future of the aerospace industry, and successfully sending spacecraft to another planet for the benefit of Earth and beyond!