• Brooke Owens Fellow, Class of 2026

• Northwestern University, Mechanical Engineering, ‘27

• Mentor: TBD

• Brookie Mentor: TBD

Melanie Cabrera is a junior at Northwestern University, majoring in Mechanical Engineering. She is originally from Chicago and finds herself motivated by the innate question of how complex systems work and sustain themselves, whether it is the human body or space travel systems.

Melanie Cabrera started her research career at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. She spent two summers in the Arispe Laboratory studying the mechanisms of vascular disease. Her research was particularly focused on the role of RASA1 in CM-AVM.

Her interests have since shifted to aerospace systems and the way they operate. She is currently part of the Northwestern University Space Technology and Rocketry Society (NUSTARS). She is a founding member of the first ever Lunabotics team at Northwestern University and leads the design of the lunar regolith excavation system for the 2025-2026 NASA Lunabotics Competition. She is a NASA L'SPACE Mission Concept Academy alum having contributed to the design and operational scheduling of a robotic Mars reconnaissance mission.

In industry, Melanie has worked as a Sustaining Engineering Intern at Medtronic. She will join SpaceX this summer as a Mechanical Engineering Intern.

She finds herself in awe of space and the engineers who have made it possible to explore.