Student Profile: Maria Rocco

Not many aerospace engineers can lay claim to designing kayak waterparks. Fortunately for Maria Rocco, her experience as an undergraduate student in the Aerospace Engineering Sciences department at CU has been far from conventional. 

After high school, Maria took a gap year and followed her love of nature to Olympic National Forest, where she assisted a butterfly specialist in her research. This specialist bemoaned the fact that an inadequate number of engineers understand biological systems, impeding the creation of tracking devices for creatures such as butterflies.  Hoping to fill this gap, Maria decided to double major in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Aerospace Engineering at CU.

Maria’s vision for applying her two majors has been an evolution in-progress:  “The cycle of my interests has changed so much. I have always been very interested in combining my two degrees, but in different ways”. Pursuing her love of the outdoors, Maria joined S20 Design and Engineering, a recreational waterpark designer for kayakers. Maria’s two years with S20 as a project manager allowed her to apply her technical engineering and problem solving skills to the organizational and strategic challenges faced by an internationally-active company.

One of the kayak courses that Maria helped design through S20 Design and Engineering.

With graduation rapidly approaching, Rocco experienced a culminating formative experience – senior design projects. A member of senior design team STATIS, Maria was tasked with aiding in the creation of a non-contact temperature sensor test bed for spacecraft applications.

Maria was incredibly inspired by the experience, greatly enjoying the up-close and personal application of the engineering design process. During the AES graduation reception, Maria was recognized as the “Most Effective Project Manager” among this year’s senior design teams.

As Maria now prepares to begin her career, she hopes to obtain a “traditional” aerospace job. However, if her past is any indicator, Maria’s eclectic interests and experiences are likely to lead her in many interesting directions.

-Written By: Ari Sandberg, Intern