• Brooke Owens Fellow, Class of 2022

• The University of Alabama, Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics, ‘23

• Host Institution: Planet

• Executive Mentor: Danielle Wood

• Brookie Mentor: Hira Nadeem

Simran Dhoju is a junior at The University of Alabama majoring in Aerospace Engineering and minoring in Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mathematics. Born and raised in Nepal, she enjoys being in the nature and embracing Nepali culture and heritage. She was not introduced to the aerospace world until the 2015 Nepal Earthquake of 7.8 magnitude. She realized how the lack of Nepal’s own satellite caused delays in receiving satellite images to locate the victims. She dreams of one day establishing an earth-imaging satellite company in Nepal to help with disaster response and management.

On campus, she is the Project Manager of the solids rocket team competing at Spaceport America Cup 2022, coordinating the design, manufacturing, and testing of solid rockets. She is also a peer mentor for international students and a student engineer at Alabama Industrial Assessment Center where she makes assessments for energy reductions in various factories. In early 2021, she founded Women of Aeronautics and Astronautics Nepal, a non-profit that supports Nepali women and gender minorities in aerospace.

Simran is a 2021 Zed Factor Fellow and interned at Wisk Aero as a Mechanical Engineer. She supported the development of the rotor mechanism, performed various design iterations, and contributed to both Women at Wisk and Wisk Sustainability teams. As a 2022 Brooke Owens Fellow, she will be interning at Planet as a Systems Engineer.

Outside of academics and outreach, she loves hiking, camping, skiing, and writing spoken word poetry.