• Brooke Owens Fellow, Class of 2022

• University of North Dakota, Physics, Mathematics, ‘23

• Host Institution: Virgin Orbit

• Executive Mentor: Lori Gaze

• Brookie Mentor: Lainey Drake

Sydney Menne is a junior at the University of North Dakota. She is double majoring in Mathematics and Physics with a focus in Astrophysics. Growing up in Minneapolis, Minnesota, she spent a lot of time around airplanes. She always knew she wanted to fly, and got her pilots license before coming to college.

Sydney has been involved with research in physics since her first semester at UND. She has assisted a professor with research in astrophysics, and done much independent research in astrophysics, particle physics, and more recently, nuclear physics. She has also done research through a NASA Summer Research Fellowship, examining stellar and supernovae data from various catalogs. Last summer, she worked with the University of Muenster Institute of Nuclear Physics through a DAAD-RISE scholarship, conducting data analysis on an electron-gun calibration source for the KATRIN experiment. She enjoyed being a part of the international KATRIN collaboration and working closely with the graduate research group.

Her involvement with the UND Advanced Rocketry Team sparked her interest in rocketry, and she is now an officer for the team which competes annually in the NASA Student Launch competition. The team is fairly small, so she enjoys working on a large variety of projects with the launch vehicle. Sydney also works as a NASA STEM Ambassador, which includes helping with various community STEM events, helping with tours of the UND Human Spaceflight Laboratory and the UND Spacecraft Simulator Facility to students, representing the North Dakota NASA Space Grant Consortium by working booths at various events, and working with other STEM ambassadors to create interactive online learning platforms for teachers. Sydney highly values these opportunities to share her passion for STEM and space with others.

In her free time, Sydney loves to hike, travel, ski, and work with horses. She volunteers at a local nonprofit ranch, and enjoys getting to spend time with the horses and other animals. She also enjoys volunteering with fellow students through a university organization, the Big Event, planning an annual community-wide volunteer day.

As a 2022 Brooke Owens Fellow, Sydney is very excited to join the propulsion engineering team with Virgin Orbit in Long Beach, CA.