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SOPHIA PORTER

  • Brooke Owens Fellow, Class of 2018

  • Johns Hopkins University, Physics and Applied Mathematics & Statistics, '18

  • Host Institution: Blue Origin

  • Mentor: Carissa Christensen

Sophia Porter is a Test Operations Engineer at Blue Origin's West Texas Launch Site. She is responsible for testing the BE-4 engine, which produces 550k lbf and will propel Blue Origin's New Glenn and ULA's Vulcan rockets into orbit.

As a 2018 Brooke Owens Fellow, Sophia interned with Blue Origin's Sales, Marketing, and Customer Experience group. She graduated early from Johns

Hopkins University with dual majors in Physics and Applied Mathematics & Statistics. She credits her interest in space to an early love of astrophotography, a field that helped her merge her artistic and scientific interests.

In 2015, Sophia gave the Keynote address at the annual Robert H. Goddard Memorial Dinner, where she discussed art and science in the context of space. Since then, art and science have served as her 3D glasses, and in 2016 she received a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship grant to pursue independent research on the topic.

Sophia has interned at SpaceX, where she performed certification testing for Dragon 2 hardware, and in the International Space Station Division at NASA Headquarters, working on the 2017 Transition Report to Congress. During her first two years of college, Sophia worked at the Space Telescope Science Institute to develop a naive Bayesian classifier, called PACMan, to sort proposals for Hubble time. The PACMan project is published in the Astrophysical Journal. Sophia also volunteers with Women in Aerospace and serves on the Board of Advisors for the Coalition for Deep Space Exploration. She is responsible for co-founding the Ask A Brookie mentorship program, which matches Fellows with interested students and may be accessed via the tab above.

When she is not testing engines, Sophia enjoys growing succulents, painting, and taking care of her rescue puppy, Ruby, whom she found under a car.

Sophia is grateful for the numerous opportunities afforded by the Brooke Owens Fellowship.