• Brooke Owens Fellow, Class of 2023

• Toronto Metropolitan University, Mechanical Engineering, ‘24

• Host Institution: Zipline

• Mentor: Judith Hayes

• Brookie Mentor: TBD

Vanessa Van Decker is a Mechanical Engineering Student studying at Toronto Metropolitan University under the prestigious President’s Scholarship. She is excited to be a Brookie at Zipline this summer working in California on the Structures, Mechanisms, and Integration test team. She is grateful for the opportunity to contribute to robotics that improve logistics and medical access for remote areas and beyond.

Growing up in Palmer Rapids in the rural Ottawa Valley contributed to Vanessa’s love of nature and her interest in using technology to improve lives in remote areas. She can often be found whitewater kayaking and rock climbing in the Canadian wilderness.

Vanessa has a passion for robotics and space exploration and explores that passion through the contribution of technical ideas and community leadership. She has contributed to cardiac catheter robotics research as a research assistant. She loves working hands-on and machined parts for her university rover team where she was a mechanical lead, media and outreach team founder, and science team captain. Vanessa is also the 2022-2023 President of the national non-profit SEDS Canada (Students for the Exploration and Development of Space) which hosts the annual Canadian Space Conference, and student reduced gravity experiments and stratospheric balloon experiments. She often works at the intersection of science and communication and enjoys writing and knitting design.

In 2022 Vanessa was honoured to be one of ten Inaugural Zenith Fellows, selected for her outstanding community involvement, technical capabilities, and passion for contributing to the Canadian space sector. She worked as a Mission Operations Engineering Student Intern at Mission Control Inc. in Ottawa Canada where she contributed to a lunar mission, writing the mission operations manual for MoonNet the first AI on the moon. She also worked on the integration of a class 3b laser induced breakdown spectroscopy unit on a lunar rover prototype, was a science team member at the ESA Space Resources Challenge competition, performed electrostatic lunar dust mitigation research and worked on the design of an orbital robotics lab. Vanessa is looking forward to working on drones this summer as a mechanical engineering intern at Zipline and continuing to advocate for rural communities and gender minorities in engineering.