• Brooke Owens Fellow, Class of 2021

• Brown University, Electrical Engineering, ‘22

• Host Institution: Sierra Nevada Corporation

• Mentor: Nicholas Skytland

• Brookie Mentor: Nina Arcot

Lauren Adachi is a junior studying Electrical Engineering at Brown University. She is originally from San Francisco, California. Lauren first developed an interest in STEM through her involvement with the Lowell Science Research Program in high school, where she worked at the Wittmann cell biology lab at UCSF for 2 years. Despite her childhood love of puzzles and problem solving, it wasn’t until college when she realized she could be an engineer.

During her freshman year of college, she joined Brown Space Engineering, Brown’s undergraduate CubeSat team, as a member of the Avionics Hardware team. Her involvement with the Avionics team helped her discover her passion for hardware design and space; it also encouraged her to take classes in analog, digital, and mixed-signal electronics and to serve as an undergraduate teaching assistant for Electrical Circuits & Signals.

Last summer, Lauren worked for two labs at Brown. The first was as a member of the Pufferfish (Pez Globo) Ventilator team for the Rosenstein Lab. The project was to create a FDA-approved open-source ventilator that could be manufactured by anyone in the world. She designed and tested the interface printed circuit board for the ventilator. The second was the Tripathi Biomedical Lab, where she wrote firmware for a device that automates chemical reactions.

Lauren is now the Avionics Hardware leader and Co-president of Brown Space Engineering, where she is leading her team to design their second CubeSat. As a subgroup leader, she leads a team of 10 undergraduates to design the power, radio, and control electronic systems for the satellite. She is also a member of the Brown University Club Figure Skating team and enjoys drawing, painting, iced drinks, stargazing, hiking, and good music.

As a Brooke Owens Fellow, Lauren will be working on the Sierra Nevada Corporation’s Dream Chaser team as a Systems Engineering Intern!