Year: Graduate Student
Major: Aerospace Engineering
Hometown: Fort Washington, MD
Scholarships: Rackham Merit Fellowship (2011-present), National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (2011-present)
Hobbies: Creative writing, traveling the globe, dreaming about traveling the known universe, and some day soon, flying
Favorite Quote: Do or do not, there is no try. -Jedi Grand Master Yoda

Jessica grew up in Fort Washington, MD, and attended From the Heart Christian School from kindergarten through graduation in May 2007. She chose to pursue her undergraduate degree at the University of Maryland, College Park, and she earned a Bachelor of Science in Aerospace Engineering in 2011. Her undergraduate research project in UMD's Glenn L. Martin Wind Tunnel inspired her to tackle more of the thorny problems of the aerospace field, and she enrolled in the University of Michigan's Aerospace Engineering Ph.D. Program in Fall 2011.

She is currently a first-year graduate student working with Prof. Cesnik in the Active Aeroelasticity and Structures Research Laboratory. Specifically, her work deals with developing high-fidelity time-domain simulations of very flexible aircraft and the coupled aerodynamic, rigid-body, and structural behavior that they exhibit. Her pet project is X-HALE, an eXperimental High Altitude Long Endurance UAV that will be used for nonlinear aeroelastic tests.