• Brooke Owens Fellow, Class of 2021

• Harvard College, Applied Mathematics, ‘23

• Host Institution: Avascent

• Mentor: Tanya Harrison

• Brookie Mentor: Haley Lewis

Sofia Martinez is an incoming junior at Harvard College, taking the 2020/21 school year as a gap year interning for Symbotic LLC. She is majoring in Applied Mathematics with a focus on Physics, and minoring in Astrophysics.

Sofia has always had an interest in space exploration and the physics governing our universe. Her curiosity began with a particularly competitive second-grade reading challenge, and ever since then, it is quite likely you will find Sofia with her nose stuck in a book about space. It wasn’t until her first college astronomy course that she was able to learn about the universe and confirm her learnings with direct calculations- showing her the real possibility of making this a career.

During her internship with Symbotic, Sofia has created models and conducted analysis of distributional manufacturing systems in order to test different solutions and optimize efficiency. In the summer of 2020, she worked at the Center for Space Research at the University of Texas at Austin to find a link between atom interferometry and the gravitational potential of the earth. At Harvard, Sofia is actively engaged in the Society of Women Engineers organization. She helps bring together like-minded women in STEM in order to encourage collaboration and support that ultimately propels the members through their college careers and beyond. She is also a mentor for Women in Computer Science, helping first-year Harvard students navigate the academic and social world of campus.

Outside of academics, Sofia is a practice coordinator for Harvard Club Swimming. She enjoys writing workouts to push members and relieve stress from everyday life. She enjoys reading and traveling whenever she can.

As a Brooke Owens fellow, Sofia is excited to join Avascent as a 2021 summer intern where she will contribute to, as well as learn from, projects in the aerospace industry.