Q&A: Senior Ariel Shaver Wins Matthew Isakowitz Fellowship
SIE senior Ariel Shaver recently was recently selected for the 2022 Matthew Isakowitz Fellowship. Over the summer, she’ll be a systems engineering intern at Hedron, helping develop a satellite infrastructure that aims to transform real-time transmission capabilities between ground and orbit. In the fall, she’s heading to the Georgia Institute of Technology to earn her master’s degree in aerospace engineering and work as a graduate research assistant in the Aerospace System Design Laboratory.
Why did you choose to study engineering at the University of Arizona?
My high school astronomy teacher suggested a summer camp taking place in Tucson, an area of the country I had never visited. That summer program was run by Dr. Don McCarthy, who inspired me to study astronomy and is one of my greatest mentors to this day.
I switched to systems engineering my sophomore year. As I learned more information in my first year, I realized that engineering would give me the tools to build the type of career I was interested in. Systems engineering teaches a big picture approach, which aligns well with my natural way of thinking and curiosity about the world. It’s a way of organizing your thoughts to reach an optimal decision or design, and I knew I could use my knowledge in this field for a variety of applications.
Tell us about your NASA internship!
In summer 2021, I worked as a project systems engineering intern at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. I worked on a mission called SPHEREx, an all-sky spectral survey set to gather information about galaxy formation and the state of the early universe. My primary assignment was to create a Python script for updating requirements in a project-wide database, while gathering input from a future end user.
There, I became particularly interested in learning about early concept design and the methodologies used to narrow a broad question to a solvable problem. From my time at JPL, I have a better idea of the variety and breadth of roles that systems engineering takes on throughout the project lifecycle. I’m so grateful for the incredible lessons from my leader, Jennifer Rocca, about developing yourself by gathering insight from others. I was encouraged (and required!) to seek out meetings with scientists, engineers, and managers from all over the lab, and gained some invaluable mentorship along the way.