Summer of Opportunity: Aerospace Engineering Student Leads Team to NASA

Summer of Opportunity

Catie Alfonzo-Jenner ('24) is a rising senior at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, majoring in Aerospace Engineering. As her journey at Embry-Riddle nears its final year, she is taking advantage of all the opportunities her school has to offer.

When reflecting on her decision to attend Embry-Riddle, she remembered her experience of being welcomed while touring the university as a major factor.

“For lack of a better term, I liked the vibe,” she smiled. “The people here are a lot nicer and more welcoming than any other school I toured. It didn't feel like they were uptight or like they were looking down at me, which is obviously really nice. I felt like I could actually talk to a person sitting next to me.”

Since her first year at Embry-Riddle, Alfonzo-Jenner has flourished.

She just co-led a team from the Micro Gravity Club at Embry-Riddle as they traveled to NASA to test their design for the Micro-g Neutral Buoyancy Experiment Design Teams (Micro-g NExT) challenge and recently landed a summer internship on Embry-Riddle's Daytona Beach Campus.

NASA’s Micro-G NExT Challenge

NASA’s Micro-G NExT challenge gives undergraduate teams from all over the United States an opportunity to design, build and test their own tool, created with the intention of combatting a current challenge in space exploration.

If teams make it past Phase I of the competition, they are invited to NASA’s Johnson Space Center to test their designs.

“So, the testing is in Houston at the Neutral Buoyancy Lab, which is that giant pool that they have,” Alfonzo-Jenner shared. “You stay there for a few days, you come up with how they're going to test it and you lead the testing.”

The Neutral Buoyancy Lab contains an underwater environment that effectively simulates microgravity. There, experienced NASA divers test the tools created by student teams while receiving direction from the students themselves.

For this design challenge, teams created a handle extension designed to maintain its function even when coated in moon dust, which is very fine and tends to stick to whatever it may touch. The mechanism is also designed to be simple enough for it to be easily connectable to a variety of pre-existing NASA tools.

The tool brought by the team from Embry-Riddle's performed as intended, and the testing went “really well.”

“It was an exciting opportunity to go somewhere I’ve never been and to test our prototype in the NBL,” Alfonzo-Jenner said. “According to the people that I met at NASA, being able to test in the pool is a really big deal. It certainly felt like a big deal!”

Inspiration for Success

Alfonzo-Jenner cites the strong women in her life as her inspiration to keep pushing herself forward.

“My mom has had full custody of my brother and I, so she's always been working like crazy. She got a second degree when she was in her early forties and that's so inspiring, the fact that she was able to switch careers like that,” she said, offering an example of her mother’s resilience.

Alfonzo-Jenner also shared that her grandmother, who grew up in Brooklyn without generational wealth or support before moving to New Jersey, is a major source of inspiration in her life.

“She really built herself up. She sent her own three kids through college and now she's helping me,” she said with pride.

While she has received guidance from those who mean the most to her throughout her educational career, Alfonzo-Jenner offered her own advice to incoming college students.

“Get involved! Even if it's something small, like the tennis club. I held back joining that because it just started my freshman year and I was like, ‘I'm so busy and I don't know anyone,’” she remembered. “But having activities on campus has really helped me get a lot better with speaking to strangers and with the whole hiring process and interviews... it's helped me a lot.”

As Alfonzo-Jenner embarks on her senior year at Embry-Riddle, she plans to stay involved on-campus and get ready for life beyond her undergraduate studies, pursuing a career in aerospace engineering. With experiences that boosted her personal and professional growth and the motivation to stay focused and pursue her interests, Alfonzo-Jenner is truly set up for success in her senior year and beyond.