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Hira Nadeem

  • Brooke Owens Fellow, Class of 2020

  • McMaster University, Electrical Engineering, ‘20

  • Host Institution: Planet Labs

  • Mentor: Charity Weeden

Hira Nadeem is a recent graduate with a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering from McMaster University. She has always loved space exploration and sharing it with anyone who will listen.

Throughout her university career, Hira continuously was involved in STEM outreach at her school. In her second year, she started a student chapter of The Planetary Society on campus to provide a place for students from any discipline to meet with each other and talk about space. In her third year, she started working with the Students for the Exploration and Development of Space (SEDS) Canada as the Director of Advocacy, then the Events Chair. Hira successfully led the planning of SEDS-Canada's annual National student space conference in 2019 and was elected President of the organization for the 2019-2020 term.

Also in her third year, Hira found her love for cube satellites after joining the McMaster NEUDOSE cube satellite mission as an Embedded Firmware Developer. As a part of the Canadian CubeSat Project with the Canadian Space Agency, Hira has had the opportunity to work with her team to develop the flight computer and software for the mission with a launch date in 2022. She took on leadership within her subteam as the Command and Data Handling Team Lead to progress them through the Mission Concept Review and Preliminary Design Review, and in January, was appointed the Operations and Co-Project Manager for the project. She had the opportunity to work her first space job at Sinclair Interplanetary, a satellite components manufacturer, for a summer internship in 2019 and has been itching to get back into the space industry since.

Outside of working in space, Hira is a slam poet and visual artist. In 2017, she competed in the Canadian Festival for Spoken Word with her team, making it to the semi-finalist round. She paints scenes of space and nature to communicate the different parallels between exploration and the impact on Earth.

Beyond her bachelor's degree, Hira hopes to pursue graduate studies to learn about the applications of engineering in planetary science. She would like to lead exploratory space missions someday and use her background to improve the climate and quality of life on Earth. She is excited to join the Planet Labs Space Systems team as a Brooke Owens Fellow this fall!