• Brooke Owens Fellow, Class of 2022

• Iowa State University, Aerospace Engineering, ‘23

• Host Institution: Iridium

• Executive Mentor: Jenn Gustetic

• Brookie Mentor: Shreya Gowda

Hanna Stec is a third-year student studying Aerospace Engineering at Iowa State University. Hanna has always been fascinated with the moon and space and the missions that allowed humanity to learn more about them. While attending an all-girls high school in her hometown of Omaha Nebraska, she met numerous role models that helped her uncovered passions for engineering and empowering gender minorities in STEM. These passions mixed with her love for space helped Hanna uncover her dream of working in the space industry as an aerospace engineer.

Since her first year at Iowa State, Hanna has been a member of the Laboratory for Temporal Logic where she has developed software for a runtime verification tool for unmanned systems called R2U2. Through her work on R2U2, Hanna has developed a deep appreciation for the complex challenges that can be solved by coding (fun fact, the Perseverance Rover used about 500,000 lines of code to execute its landing on Mars!!). Most recently, she has worked on the NASA Lunar Gateway Project by completing testing of R2U2 to be used by NASA on the Lunar Gateway.

Hanna has also been heavily involved in Society of Women Engineers (SWE) at both the collegiate chapter level and the national level. She is currently the President-Elect of the ISU chapter and will serve as the President during the 2022-2023 academic year, where she is able to help provide a myriad of opportunities for the women engineers at ISU. Additionally, she is currently on the Advanced Track of the SWE Leadership Development Program, where she collaborates with other collegiate SWE members to complete projects that address needs in the SWE National business structure. In addition to her involvement in SWE, Hanna also completes K-12 Stem outreach for the Women in Science and Engineering (WiSE) office at ISU as a student role model.

When she is not working, Hanna enjoys playing board games, cooking, and hosting her friends for board game nights! She also loves musical theatre and will take any opportunity she can to see a show live.

As a 2022 Brooke Owens Fellow, Hanna is incredibly excited to spend the summer working as a Satellite Network Operations Intern at Iridium in Leesburg, VA.