• Brooke Owens Fellow, Class of 2026

• University of California - Irvine, Computer Engineering, ‘27

• Mentor: TBD

• Brookie Mentor: TBD

Ivana Xu is a junior at the University of California, Irvine studying Computer Engineering. She is thrilled to be a Brooke Owens Fellow and join Vast Space as an Avionics System Test Engineering Intern this summer to develop and validate Hardware-in-the-Loop test assets onboard Haven-1.

Ivana's interest in space began when she worked at the Exploratorium in San Francisco, where she spent a summer bringing JPL's Perseverance rover to life for curious museum visitors. Her interest deepened in college, where exposure to rocketry and commercial space set her on her current path. Her professional journey began at Rocket Lab, where she performs root cause investigations, electrical testing, and non-conformance dispositions for PCBAs and wire harnesses across launch and space systems, gaining firsthand experience with IPC and NASA standards for flight hardware. Alongside that, she is a Power Systems Engineer with UCI HyperXite, designing a control board for a hyperloop pod.

Looking ahead, Ivana hopes to shape the electrical and avionics systems of next-generation spacecraft to push commercial space capabilities further. Outside of engineering, she is a collegiate dragon boat paddler and enjoys weightlifting, scenic hikes, and concerts.