Top 20 University Students Have Their Eyes On Space

In a nod to Frank White’s 1987 work The Overview Effect, these students overwhelmingly look to space when they envision the future. White posited that when astronauts are in space, “looking at Earth amidst the dark, silent vastness of the universe,” they look at the planet in a different way. The students say space tourism will bring us closer to cherishing the planet and all who live on it. They believe we will become a multi-planet species and that the aerospace and defense industry will play a starring role in building the framework to support this.

B.S. Aerospace Engineering Sciences • Class of 2019 • University of Colorado-Boulder

Aaron Aboaf has completed internships with Raytheon Missile Systems and is the structural design lead on two cubesats—the Colorado Earth Escape Explorer (CU-E³) and Maxwell. CU-E³ took second place in NASA’s Cube Quest challenge, qualifying it for a launch spot on the first flight of the Space Launch System.

Aboaf is also a student ambassador for the university, leading campus tours for prospective students, and he volunteers with Colorado’s AeroSpace Ventures Day. He honed his leadership skills as a sailing instructor at Greenwood Village, southeast of Denver.

M.S. Aerospace Engineering • Class of 2019 • Massachusetts Institute of Technology
B.S. Electrical Engineering • Class of 2017 • University of Idaho

As an undergraduate in electrical engineering at the University of Idaho, Alexa Aguilar helped to attract young people to engineering careers as a university representative. As a member of the university’s Electrical and Computer Engineering Ambassadors, she worked to increase enrollment by 4.3%. She was also active as a volunteer at the local Humane Society and participated in Idaho’s Center for Volunteerism, working with children and nursing home residents.

While at MIT, Aguilar has interned at the university’s Lincoln Laboratory Advanced Sensors and Techniques unit, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab and Micron Technologies. Her research has focused on Cubesat Laser-communication Infrared Crosslink (CLICK) to demonstrate a laser cross-link between two spacecraft at 20 Mbps. She has been responsible specifically for trade studies on receivers using a time-to-digital converter and the design of an optical receiver.

B.S. Aerospace Engineering; Minor in Materials Science and Engineering • Class of 2019 • University of Virginia

Matthew Asper, a junior, is president of the AIAA branch at UVA, founder of the university’s first combat robotics team, treasurer of the cycling club and treasurer of Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity. He also organized UVA’s 2017 Rotunda Dinner.

Asper interned as a project engineer at Xometry, a 3D-printing and manufacturing company in Maryland. He is researching two different methods of aircraft deicing: one using a hydrophobic coating to mitigate ice accretion and the second using a ceramic, porous material that employs back pressure to reduce ice accumulation.

B.S. Civil Engineering • Class of December 2017 • University of Central Florida

In addition to participating in outreach activities to high school students on behalf of the student chapter of the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers, Estafania Bohorquez volunteered with the Central Florida chapter of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. She also participated in Engineers Without Borders.

Bohorquez’s research has been focused on propulsion and engine materials, specifically thermal barrier coatings. She worked in collaboration with DLR, the German research center for aeronautics and space, to test samples of sand-infiltrated coatings through 3D confocal Raman imaging to develop coating life prediction.

She interned with Siemens Power & Gas and the Walt Disney Co. Bohorquez also served as a research project lead for the NASA Florida Space Grant Consortium.

B.S. Aerospace Engineering • Class of December 2017 • Georgia Institute of Technology

While he was a student at Georgia Tech, Nicholas Branch gained experience working with the university’s High Power Propulsion Technology lab as well as with SpaceX’s Dragon 2 ground operations and at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center. His research has focused on demonstrating the validity of terahertz laser diagnostics in electric propulsion and on providing valuable characterization of transient states of plasma.

Branch’s community service included Georgia Tech Trailblazers for outdoor environmental service and Team Buzz for Atlanta-based community service. He also was a Georgia Tech campus first responder. Branch worked with the university’s outreach programs, including one-on-one mentoring, to inspire K-12 interest in science, technology, engineering and math.

M.S. Aeronautics and Astronautics • Class of 2018 • Massachusetts Institute of Technology
B.S. of Applied Science Engineering (Aerospace Engineering Major) • Class of 2016 • University of Toronto

Beyond the classroom, Arthur Brown is active with the Academy of Courageous Minority Engineers and the MIT Graduate Student Council’s Diversity and Inclusion Subcommittee. At the University of Toronto, he was a member of the Engineering Science basketball team.

Brown was a researcher for the computational aerodynamics lab at Toronto and completed pilot flight training in five weeks. He is now conducting a trade study between several proposed on-demand vehicle configurations. As part of this work, he developed a vehicle design and optimization tool.

Graduate Student, Aerospace Engineering-Astrodynamics • University of Colorado-Boulder
B.S. Aerospace Engineering-Space Flight • Class of 2015 • University of Texas-Austin

At the University of Texas-Austin, Luke Bury was one of six undergraduates chosen for the Engineering Student Leadership Award, and he was a member of Sigma Gamma Tau, the National Aerospace Engineering Honor Society.

He served as president of the AIAA student branch at Texas, and at Colorado he continues to volunteer with science, technology, engineering and math outreach efforts including at the Girls Athletic Leadership Schools Denver.

Bury is working to create a new framework for landing spacecraft on moons of the outer Solar System via low-energy dynamics, a four-stage project designed to inform energy trajectories, maneuvers and landing and recovery/abort procedures. He interned with NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Europa Clipper Mission and was a researcher with the Texas Spacecraft Laboratory.

B.S. Aerospace Engineering • Class of 2018 • University of Maryland

A founding member and then president of Women in Aeronautics and Astronautics, Rosemary Davidson was a resident assistant for 80 residents in the Women in Engineering Living and Learning Program. She is a member of AIAA and vice president of Sigma Gamma Tau, the National Aerospace Engineering Honor Society.

Davidson’s research has focused on design of an attitude control system for a cubesat proposal at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. The mission is to compare in situ electron measuring with imaging inside the aurora borealis. She currently is working on verification simulation of the controller.

B.S. Aerospace Engineering • Class of 2018 • Tuskegee University

After she graduates in May, Jessica Lillian Dedeaux will begin work at Boeing in July as an engineer in the Engineering Career Foundational Program. In addition to interning with Boeing, Dedeaux interned at the GE Aviation Composites operation in Batesville, Mississippi, where she compiled a science, technology, engineering, arts and math lesson plan at the Boys and Girls Club for students in grades three to six.

As the chief engineer on Tuskegee’s rocketry design, Dedeaux researched the pressure, temperature, relative humidity, solar irradiance and ultraviolet radiation in relation to the strain placed on the material selected for the rocket’s fins from the time of apogee until recovery.

She also was selected to represent Tuskegee on a multi-university team to design, build and fly a UAV, leading the 3D experience software effort.

Dedeaux is a member of the National Society of Black Engineers, executive secretary of the Student Government Association at Tuskegee and a member of the Marching Crimson Pipers Band. She completed the university community service initiative with 400 service hours and was named the 88th Miss Tuskegee University. 

M.S. Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering • Class of 2018 • Purdue University
B.S. Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering • Class of 2016 • Purdue University

Katherine Fowee is a member of the Purdue Flying Club; Sigma Gamma Tau, the National Aerospace Engineering Honor Society; Pi Delta Phi, the National French honor society; and the Daughters of the American Revolution. She has participated in science, technology, engineering and math outreach programs and as a volunteer for a local Boy Scout troop.

As a Division I soccer player at Purdue, part of the Big Ten Conference, Fowee was an Academic All-Big Ten honoree in 2013 and 2014.

She is conducting research on an experimental micropropulsion device for small-satellite attitude control called the Film Evaporation MEMS Tunable Array (FEMTA). (MEMS stands for microelectromechanical systems.) FEMTA uses the microcapilary action of water in a micro channel to generate micronewtons of thrust when exposed to a vacuum. For this research, Fowee has been involved in nozzle design, micro-fabrication techniques and testing.

B.A. Computer Science • Class of 2019 • Columbia University

Concentrating on astrophysics and business, James Gong was chosen for the King’s Crown Leadership Excellence Award in Innovation at Columbia, where is he co-president of the Columbia Space Initiative. He is vice president of Columbia Undergraduate Film Productions, combining his engineering interests with filmmaking. This led to an internship at Lucasfilm, where he worked on developing computer generated imagery and simulations tools, including space combat applications. He also interned at Nielsen.

Gong’s research work has been associated with NASA’s Revolutionary Aerospace Systems Concepts-Academic Linkage design competition to deliver a crew of four humans to a Martian moon. Gong is the lead on the Columbia team, responsible for identifying subsystem requirements for the mission architecture, making design decisions at the system level and subsystem integration.

Graduate Student, Aerospace Engineering • Class of 2021 • Texas A&M University
B.S. Aerospace Engineering • Class of 2017 • University of Oklahoma

While at Oklahoma, Christine Greve was a member of the Crimson Skies Design/Build/Fly team as well as the Student Advisory Council, AIAA student branch, ballroom dance club and the university’s musical competition team. She also took part in the Norman, Oklahoma, Rotary Club and coordinated philanthropic events for Oklahoma Coalition Against Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault.

Greve is a graduate assistant researcher in the plasma dynamics modeling lab at Texas A&M and has interned at the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center. Her current research work involves the development of a fully self-consistent, particle-in-cell kinetic model to investigate Hall thruster discharge plasmas.

B.S. Aerospace Engineering/B.S. Chemical Engineering • Class of 2018 • University of Arizona

In addition to her studies, Namrah Habib competes at the national level in kickboxing and Brazilian jiu-jitsu. She is a member of the Tau Beta Pi engineering honors society and the university’s Women in Engineering Programming Board, creating campus events and science, technology, engineering and math outreach initiatives.

Habib works with the image-processing working group on NASA’s Origins Spectral Interpretation Resource Identification Security-Regolith Explorer (Osiris-Rex) program. She is using feature-based matching tools and integrated software imagers to produce an algorithm to generate a controlled mosaic of the asteroid Bennu. She has completed internships at the university’s Lunar Planetary Laboratory as well as NASA Glenn Research Center and MIT Lincoln Laboratory.

B.S. Mechanical Engineering/B.S. Computer Science • Class of 2020 • Colorado State University

Jared Ham is president of the AIAA student branch at CSU, which has recently tripled in size. He is project manager and head engineer of the university’s Design/Build/Fly Competition. A member of Pi Tau Sigma, the International Honor Society for Mechanical Engineers, he also interned as a mechanical engineer with NASA’s DemoSat program in Fort Collins, Colorado.

Ham currently is working on design and modification of a remote-control airplane to measure concentrations of methane and ammonia over dairies and feedlots using laser-based sensors.

B.S. Aerospace Engineering • Class of 2018 • University at Buffalo, State University of New York

Seamus Lombardo has a patent pending for a device to extract multiple samples while avoiding cross-contamination. He has been an intern at NASA Langley Research Center and Goddard Spaceflight Center. Lombardo also worked as a data and control systems intern at SpaceX’s McGregor, Texas, site and was an avionics intern at Millennium Space Systems in El Segundo, California.

Lombardo co-led the attitude determination and control subsystem effort on Buffalo’s nanosatellite program sponsored by the Air Force Research Laboratory and NASA. In addition to design, testing and characterization of flight hardware, he worked on developing orbit propagator and attitude exclusion zone algorithms.

Graduate Student, Aerospace Engineering • University of Maryland
B.S. Aerospace Engineering • Class of 2013 • University of Maryland

In addition to his research work on satellites and planetary defense, Matthew Marcus works with NASA Goddard Space Flight Center’s Satellite Servicing Projects Division. He received an Innovation Award from the Society of Satellite Professionals International for a talk titled “LEO Debris Removal using Genetic Algorithms,” and he is a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow. In addition, Marcus is active in AIAA’s student programming board and Women in Aeronautics and Astronautics at University of Maryland (UMD).

Marcus participated in the design of the UMD’s prizewinning entry in the U.S. Department of Energy’s Solar Decathlon and performed energy audits of local schools to identify areas of improved energy use.

M.S. Aeronautics and Astronautics • Class of 2019 • Purdue University
B.S. Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering • Class of 2017 • Purdue University

Kimberly Rink interned at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Johnson Space Center as well as with Boeing Commercial Aircraft’s advanced concepts group. Her research work is investigating the impact of deviations from the design process on robotic science missions. She is identifying historical design deviation cases and their impact on mission objectives, leading to a database that will be used to create a prototyping tool.

Rink is a member of the Purdue Student Engineering Foundation and took part in The Atlantic’s What’s Next? Innovation summit. She has volunteered with Habitat for Humanity in Rochester, Minnesota, and was a volunteer and young volunteer board member at the Mayo Clinic.

Graduate Program in Aerospace Engineering and Physics • University of Cambridge
Undergraduate degree in Aerospace Engineering • Class of 2016 • University of Bristol

In addition to his undergraduate degree, Jocelino Rodrigues completed a year abroad at Purdue University working on rocket and jet propulsion. He won third place in the Airbus National Student Space Competition and has been recognized by both Rolls-Royce and Qualcomm. He was the youngest candidate chosen for the Lynx Space Academy conducted by XCOR Aerospace.

His current research is investigating how varying geometry and flow conditions affect aircraft noise (direct and indirect) generation. This will include use of advanced optical diagnostics techniques to measure flow velocity and local sound speed, as well as extending the study of indirect noise to higher frequencies and the role of turbulent dispersion in attenuating inhomogeneity waves. When he isn’t studying thermoacoustics, Rodrigues is the studio equipment officer for the Churchill College Music Society and is working with the university to analyze and improve diversity among engineering students.

Graduate Student, Aerospace Engineering • Georgia Institute of Technology
B.S. Aerospace Systems Engineering • Class of 2015 • University of Akron

Ken Smith interned at NASA Langley, Glenn and Kennedy Space Centers in addition to a stint as a dynamics intern at SpaceX. While at Langley, he volunteered with the Virginia Air and Space Center and Virginia Salvation Army. He was awarded the University of Akron’s Community Leadership, Service and Philanthropy Award.

Smith’s research involves the impact of wind-induced oscillations (WIO) on circular cylindrical structures, such as a launch vehicle on the pad. He has worked specifically on developing a model of existing launch vehicles for use in wind tunnels and to assess the aerodynamic conditions at which a vehicle becomes susceptible to WIO.

B.A. Science in Aerospace Engineering • Class of 2017 • University of Toronto

Jeremy Wang has a vision of enabling socially conscious innovation and already has secured $45 million and 90-plus sponsors and investors for tech startups, design teams and events.

Wang founded PowerWring in 2014, followed in 2016 by The Sky Guys, a startup to deploy disruptive UAV and artificial technologies to heavy industry across North America. He was chosen as a facilitator for the Institute for Leadership Education in Engineering at the university and also served as a mentor for the university’s Entrepreneurship Hatchery.

He was a propulsion research and engineering intern with the Institute of Space Propulsion at Germany's DLR  aerospace center. He is the project lead for the DX-3, a vertical-takeoff-and-landing (VTOL) unmanned vehicle. The DX-3 is intended to combine the endurance and range of traditional fixed-wing aircraft with the payload capacity and VTOL capability of a multirotor to be used in high-occupancy-vehicle lane enforcement on Ontario’s highways.