• Brooke Owens Fellow, Class of 2026

• Rice University, Mechanical Engineering, ‘27

• Mentor: TBD

• Brookie Mentor: TBD

Autumn Pepper Rhodes is a third-year mechanical engineering student at Rice University, pursuing a minor in sociology. A licensed Private Pilot with an Instrument Rating, Pepper’s technical foundation is rooted in a lifelong passion for aviation, catalyzed by her early experiences at the Aviation Challenge in Huntsville, Alabama.

Since moving to Houston, Pepper has found a second home at Rice. She serves as Chief Engineer of the Rice Eclipse Rocketry Team, the university’s largest project-based engineering organization. In this role, she oversees the Avionics, Aerodynamics, and Propulsion divisions, provides technical guidance, and fosters engineering growth across the team. She is also the Co-President of the Rice University American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Student Section, where she mentors underclassmen and coordinates outreach, social, and professional development events.

In the Preston Innovation Laboratory, Pepper conducts undergraduate research on oscillating heat pipes, which are an emerging passive thermal management technology. Her work focuses on leveraging saturation pressure-driven flow to create compliant and flexible heat pipes suitable for high-power, low-volume applications, contributing to advancements in compact thermal solutions.

In summer 2025, Pepper interned at Relativity Space in Long Beach, California, as an Avionics Mechanical Integration Intern, where she supported the development of secondary structures for the Terran R launch vehicle. In summer 2026, she is thrilled to return to Long Beach to intern with Vast Space as an Environmental Testing Manufacturing Intern.

Pepper is deeply honored to join the Brooke Owens Fellowship and looks forward to contributing to and learning from this extraordinary community.