• Brooke Owens Fellow, Class of 2022

• Princeton University, B.S.E. in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, ‘24

• Host Institution: ABL Space Systems

• Executive Mentor: Meenakshi (Mini) Wadhwa

• Brookie Mentor: Courtney Leverenz

Sarah Fry is a sophomore at Princeton University majoring in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, and pursuing certificates in Astrobiology and Computer Science. Her creative inclinations began at a very young age, as she designed elaborate structures out of anything she could find and daydreamed about flying.

Her love for all things STEM took off with the encouragement of the faculty at her high school, Marymount Los Angeles. She toured NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory with her freshman geometry class, where she came face-to-face with a life-size replica of the Curiosity rover and sat in Mission Control. After completing a project on Andy Weir’s The Martian and its movie adaptation for that same geometry class, she was hooked on space exploration, falling in love with the concept of tackling seemingly insurmountable engineering problems by breaking them down into their smaller components. Her teachers encouraged her to apply to summer research and internship programs, and as a result, her early exposure to robot design and fabrication at UCLA Tech Camp, programming and stellar spectroscopy at UC Davis COSMOS, and the generation of turbulent airflow at USC SHINE fueled her interests in mechanical engineering, astrophysics, and aerospace engineering.

During the recent gap year she took for the calendar year of 2021, Sarah studied topics as diverse as nanotube mechanics, space mission design, and orbital dynamics. She interned with SAIC, a government information technology contractor, where she wrote programs to analyze satellite communications on a team generating simulations and animations of US Space Force technologies. Analyzing the performance of electromagnetic signals led her to develop a deep interest in electronic hardware, and she explored this new passion as a powertrain engineering intern at Flux Marine, a startup creating all-electric outboard motors. There, she helped create a bench test setup for powertrain components.

At Princeton, Sarah is a varsity athlete on the Women’s Lightweight Crew team and volunteers with the Special Olympics New Jersey rowing team. She also recently completed training to serve as a Learning Consultant for Princeton’s McGraw Center for Teaching and Learning, which involves assisting students one-on-one with navigating academic challenges, achieving a work-life balance, and effective time management and learning strategies. In her free time, Sarah enjoys drawing, painting, sculpture, reading about philosophy and space exploration, boating, waterskiing and cake decorating.

Sarah is beyond thrilled to be interning with ABL Space Systems for the summer of 2022!