• Brooke Owens Fellow, Class of 2024

• University of Texas at Austin, Aerospace Engineering, ‘25

• Host Institution: Relativity

• Mentor: Erika Wagner

• Brookie Mentor: Kryn Ambs

Samantha Dolski is a third-year aerospace engineering major at the University of Texas at Austin. Ever since she was in middle school, she was drawn to investigating the mysterious concepts of the universe – black holes, exoplanets, and fascinating theories about wormholes and multiverses. To her, the importance of aerospace engineering is building the bridge between humanity and the rest of the universe. For her career, Samantha looks forward to being involved in spacecraft verification and launch operations through guidance, navigation, controls work and systems engineering. Her goal is to lead mission planning of satellites, space instrumentation, and other vehicles.

Samantha has been the Director of Operations of the Texas Rocket Engineering Lab (TREL), a lab dedicated to sending the first collegiate liquid bipropellant rocket, Halcyon, to the Karman line. In operations, she creates and oversees the technical timelines of eleven vehicle teams. As Director of Operations, Samantha leads all external communication with TREL stakeholders such as Lockheed Martin, Firefly Academy, and NI.

Currently, Samantha is TREL’s Director of Avionics. She is involved in the progress of three teams: Avionics Hardware, Avionics Software, and Guidance, Navigation, and Controls. She is currently leading initiatives in the following: completing their 6DOF simulation to gather FAA clearance for an October launch, finalizing all wiring and mount plans, and completing flight software for the vehicle.

Besides operations work, she has conducted work on Halcyon’s flight weight fluids systems and helped create high-pressure testing capabilities for the lab. Outside of TREL, Samantha researches Mars' global dust storms and is the Academic Achievement Director of her sorority Alpha Xi Delta. Samantha likes to play piano and write compositions in her free time!