Three Daniel Guggenheim School Undergrads Named 2023 Brooke Owens Fellows

Althea Noonan, Ishani Peddi, and Samina Patel among the Class of 2023

By: Kelsey Gulledge

Thursday, 09 February 2023

Three Daniel Guggenheim School students have been named 2023 Brooke Owens Fellows. AE undergrads Althea Noonan, Ishani Peddi, and Samina Patel will embark on summer internships with leading aerospace engineering companies and pair with executive-level mentors who will support and work with them as they launch their careers.

The Brooke Owens Class of 2023 includes 47 Fellows selected through a fair and extremely competitive application process involving written and creative submissions, interviews with the Fellowship’s leadership team and its close network, and interviews with leading aerospace employers from across multiple sectors in the US aerospace industry.

This summer, the Fellows will start their internships and come together for the annual Brooke Owens Summit in Washington, DC. The Class of 2023 will also become part of the network of 249 Brookie alumnae spanning all aspects of space and aviation, including engineering, scientific research, policy, journalism, and entrepreneurship.

Althea Noonan is a second-year AE student also pursuing a minor in international affairs at Georgia Tech. She will be interning with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) within their office of Commercial Space Transportation. The Virginia native completed several courses through the Virginia Space Grant Consortium as a high schooler and had the opportunity to learn more about the aerospace industry through NASA’s Wallops Space Flight Center and NASA Langley Research Center.

“I loved learning about the different science, engineering, and multidisciplinary fields that all play a part in making space exploration possible and I wanted to contribute to that development,” said Noonan.

At Georgia Tech, Althea is a researcher in the Space Systems Design Lab (SSDL), where she works on the structures team of the GT-X CubeSat series. The group focuses on the rapid development of 1U-CubeSats with improvements to each generation.

Samina Patel is thrilled to begin her internship with Voyager Space Holdings in Denver, Colorado, later this year. The AE third-year has yet to pair with her mentor just yet, but she’s still excited about what’s to come. “I am most looking forward to meeting the other ‘Brookies’ at the Summit during the summer and to receiving mentorship from alumni and previous Fellows. I am also excited to broaden my knowledge and understanding of aerospace through my internship.”

The Georgia native became interested in aerospace at a young age after a family trip to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. “Laying my eyes on all of the rockets and space shuttles in Rocket Garden filled me with excitement and awe. Then, almost a decade later, my high school's robotics team advanced to the World Championships. At that moment, I knew I wanted to pursue aerospace engineering in my future.”

As a “Brookie,” Ishani Peddi is excited to intern with Ball Aerospace, in Washington, D.C. this summer, working in strategic operations. She is incredibly grateful for this opportunity and hopes to inspire meaningful change in the world.

“I have been deeply fascinated with space and innovation from a young age. From reading about ozone depletion to learning about inspiring female astronauts like Dr. Mae Jemison, I realized early on that I wanted to explore the great unknown and further the technological capacity of humanity,” said the California native.

Peddi is a second-year undergraduate student researching combustor noise pollution and acoustics in the Ben T. Zinn Combustion Lab. In addition to her aerospace related involvements, she is a member of the Georgia Tech Rowing Club, serves as a student leader through environmental and political advocacy organizations, and makes music through the campus Musician’s Network.

Georgia Tech mechanical engineering student, Lauren Paulson, was also selected to the Brooke Owens Fellowship Program Class of 2023.