February 9, 2023
Two women majoring in aerospace engineering at UT Austin’s Cockrell School of Engineering are among thirty recipients of the 2023 Matthew Isakowitz Fellowship. The program provides an internship, mentorship, networking, and extraordinary summer opportunities to college and graduate students passionate about commercial spaceflight.
Catherine Dominic, a senior in aerospace engineering, will be interning at Relativity Space this summer as part of the fellowship program. She is passionate about reusable rockets and their impact on the sustainable development of the commercial space industry. Dominic served as director of the Texas Rocket Engineering Lab (TREL) in the Department of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics at UT Austin before interning at Relativity Space, where she worked on propulsion design and fluids testing. She has also interned at Amazon Air as a Brooke Owens fellow, where she worked on material and process configurations of primary structures on autonomous aerial vehicles.
Dominic is an advocate for social entrepreneurship and is researching how drone infrastructure can be used to support communities physically disconnected by war or natural disasters. She remains involved in people-centered engineering and continues to explore the ways she can cultivate global fluency at UT Austin through the intersection of aerospace engineering and human-centered innovation. In her free time, Dominic loves editing videos for her YouTube channel, exploring new cities, and spending time with friends at her favorite local coffee shops.
Katie Mulry, a senior in aerospace engineering, will be interning at Ursa Major as part of the fellowship program. She has been involved with the Texas Rocket Engineering Lab (TREL), working to send a student-built and designed liquid bipropellant rocket to the Karman line where she co-led the stage test team. Mulry also worked on TREL’s initial hot fire test stand build up, serving on test crew for over 100 igniter tests, and the lab’s first engine hot fire.
Mulry spent a semester studying abroad at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. She has completed two previous internships in propulsion test engineering, one at Agile Space Industries in Durango, Colorado, and another at Blue Origin in Van Horn, Texas. Katie spent the summer of 2022 as an analog astronaut in Switzerland with an organization called Asclepios and is the co-founder of the International Organization of Aspiring Astronauts. In her free time, Katie enjoys writing novels, knitting, running and hiking.
Created in memory of an accomplished space entrepreneur, Matthew Isakowitz (1987-2017), the fellowship program was designed to provide impactful career training and inspiration to young men and women who embody Matthew's passion for exploring our universe to help better humankind.
Read the full Matthew Isakowitz Fellowship announcement.
