• Brooke Owens Fellow, Class of 2021

• Portland State University, Mechanical Engineering, ‘22

• Host Institution: XPRIZE Foundation

• Mentor: Hannah Kerne

• Brookie Mentor: Megs Cambra

Leslie Baker Lyon is a third-year mechanical engineering student at Portland State University. They are interested in the ways aerospace engineering can be used in service of social justice, climate change mitigation, and supporting thriving ecosystems and human communities.

Leslie comes to engineering as a nontraditional, first-generation student. They moved from Indiana to the Pacific Northwest as a young adult and established a career as a graphic designer and project manager in the printing industry. However, they had long been interested in science and math and decided to enroll in Portland Community College’s mechanical engineering transfer program.

In 2019, Leslie received the Oregon NASA Space Grant Consortium scholarship and served as a NASA Community College Aerospace Scholar at Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California. There, they worked on a Mars rover building competition. In 2020, Leslie was asked to return to Ames as a Community College Aerospace Scholars Student Mentor, providing support and guidance to students and encouraging them to continue pursuing careers in aerospace.

Outside of STEM studies, Leslie has been spending their quarantine rebuilding a motorcycle from the frame up, and has been remotely interning with NOAA’s Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary. They are also the guitarist in Portland queercore band Creature to Creature.

As a Brookie, Leslie looks forward to interning with XPRIZE. Over the long term, they look forward to dedicating their career to championing underrepresented people in STEM and using engineering to support people and the planet.