Karen Mae is a first-generation student from New York City pursuing a Master’s degree in
Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at UC Davis. Karen Mae graduated from the City
College of New York in January 2022 with a Bachelor’s in Mechanical Engineering. She is
interested in mission design, Entry, Descent, and Landing (EDL), human spaceflight, and
astrodynamics.

Karen Mae has interned at NASA Langley, NASA Armstrong, and now NASA Johnson as a
Pathways graduate student intern. Her work at Langley focused on creating a concept mission to
Titan, a moon of Saturn. She designed the concept of operations and aeroshell for this mission.
At NASA Armstrong, Karen Mae performed CAD modelling for Fiber Optics Sensing Systems
(FOSS) as well as helped the Technology Transfer Office (TTO) with contracts and inquiries
from private companies looking to use FOSS technology.

At NASA Johnson, Karen Mae works in the Flight Mechanics and Trajectory Optimization
branch within the Engineering Directorate. She specializes in entry missions like Pterodactyl, a
project designing the Adaptable Deployable Entry Placement Technology for a lunar return
mission. She has also worked on Mars Sample Return, focusing on validating and guidance
tuning the Mars entry and improving trajectory simulation functionality for future studies. Karen
Mae has also designed Artemis II/Artemis III aborts and has had the opportunity to do On-the-
Job Training (OJT) for Artemis I.

In her free time, Karen Mae enjoys going to the gym, reading, film, and travelling back to New
York or the Philippines. Karen Mae hopes to inspire the next generation of students with her
story of overcoming adversity.