IB graduate profile - Rebecca Cutri-Kohart

Graduated from Atlantic Community High School, USA, in 1997.

"I graduated from Georgia Tech nearly two years ago with a B.S. (High Honors) in Aerospace Engineering.  While I was there I was active in a lot of different groups - particularly the flying club (I earned my pilot's license in high school) and Technique, the student newspaper, where I served as the Opinions editor one semester and the Campus Life editor for a year. But most of my time was consumed by aerospace engineering activities. I had some incredible experiences, including summer internships at NASA Kennedy Space Center in Florida, NASA Langley Research Center in Virginia, and working on flight-testing C-130's with Lockheed.  I also helped out with a research project that gave me the opportunity to take a zero-g flight on NASA's Vomit Comet.

After I graduated college, some friends and I spent a little over a month backpacking in Europe before I started a research internship with a gas turbine company in Baden, Switzerland.  I didn't learn a word of German, but managed to learn a lot about thermoacoustics. I also managed to see a lot of Europe, visiting distant relatives from the town in Italy where my grandfather's family emigrated from and even spent a week in Morocco (much to the dismay of my family, because it was only a month after 9/11 and they worried). Now I'm working as a descent analyst with NASA's Johnson Space Center at the Mission Control Center and also working on my Master's degree in engineering part time at Rice University. 

Though my passion is everything aerospace - flying, sailing, and space sciences (ok, and science fiction too), I have a lot of other interests.  I try to share my passion for science with others, and mentor high school aerospace design teams, college students, and tutor local elementary school students. My other hobbies include trying to travel as often as possible, snow skiing, reading (my friends call my house "the library"), and spending time with my family and friends."