• Brooke Owens Fellow, Class of 2019

• Rutgers University, Aerospace Engineering, '19

• Host Institution: Astranis

• Mentor: Rob Meyerson

Katie is currently a Mission Operations Engineer at Astranis in San Francisco, CA. She graduated magna cum laude with her B.S. in Aerospace Engineering from Rutgers University. Growing up in a small town in the hills of northwest New Jersey, she was always captivated by the night sky. What started as curiosity grew into her passion for aerospace as she realized the potential benefits and impact that space could have for life here on Earth and beyond.

As a student at Rutgers, Katie immersed herself in extracurriculars and projects. She served as the project lead for her senior design team which focused on designing, building and testing a stand capable of measuring the thrust from a model rocket engine. Outside of her collegiate engineering projects, Katie had a passion for serving her community and mentoring the next generation of students. She led service-learning alternative break trips focused on food insecurity, homelessness, and education, and she also served as both an ambassador and mentor for the Honors College.

In 2017, Katie had the opportunity to intern for LinQuest supporting analysis for the Principal DoD Space Advisor. This experience in national security space inspired her to pursue her minor in Critical Intelligence Studies. The summer of 2018, she lived out her childhood dream of working for NASA at Langley Research Center where she worked to support analysis of the utilization of the Gateway lunar orbiter.

As a Brooke Owens Fellow in 2019, Katie interned at Astranis as a Systems and Test Engineering Intern. She focused on planning and executing radiation tests for COTS components, as well as standardizing the company's interface control documents. Following her internship, she signed a full time offer where she continued to work on radiation testing, in addition to other unit and vehicle level environmental testing. Katie is now a member of the Mission Operations team, where she work on procedure development and contingency plans.