COURTNEY SCHMITT

• Brooke Owens Fellow, Class of 2018

• Johns Hopkins University, Mechanical Engineering, ‘18; M.S.E. Robotics, ’19

• Host Institution: Virgin Galactic

• Mentor: Ellen Stofan

Courtney Schmitt is an Avionics Engineer at Blue Origin, working on controls and simulation of the BE-3U engine. Possessing a strong interest in space and driven by her curiosity to explore beyond our world, Courtney always knew that a career in the aerospace industry was her calling.

As an undergraduate at Johns Hopkins, Courtney focused her studies on Aerospace. She participated in a variety of research including working with a cosmologist to map the locations of black holes in the universe and working in a computational fluids lab, applying bio-inspired solutions to flight. The summer after her junior year, she had an internship at a start-up company manufacturing autonomous underwater vehicles. For her senior capstone project, Courtney worked on a team to design an enclosure for a high-precision optics table. The design will assist NASA funded researchers at the Space Telescope Science Institute to search for life on habitable extrasolar planets around other stars.

Courtney continued her studies as a Master's student studying Robotics where she performed research on autonomous vehicle systems, was an active member of her school's rocketry team's avionics group and was the President and co-founder of the Johns Hopkins Chapter of the Students for the Exploration and Development of Space (SEDS).

While at Hopkins, Courtney has volunteered her time as a teacher for the Community School of Baltimore, helping to plan and teach STEM labs to high school students. She also was involved in the Bystander Intervention Training program at Hopkins, educating the community about gender violence. In Seattle, Courtney mentors an all-girl First Robotics team out of the Museum of Flight.

As a Brooke Owens Fellow, Courtney worked for Virgin Galactic in the summer of 2018 working on SpaceShipTwo.