Eye on the Sky: Sarahi Granados '21

As President Biden revealed the first images from NASA’s James Webb Telescope this July, Sarahi Granados ’21 was on the edge of her seat. After falling in love with space in second grade, she had been determined to make her mark on the industry ever since.  

Granados joined the Webb Telescope project in 2019 during a summer internship and played a role in inspecting, validating and analyzing the telescope’s attitude control system. The system is what helps the telescope maintain a stable orbit and, most importantly, point it in the right direction to take pictures. When she saw the first image and knew her hard work had paid off, she couldn’t help but feel proud.  

“The entire world was in awe, and to be able to say that I worked on the instrument that captured a tiny speck of space in an image had me feeling proud,” she said. “My second-grade self would not believe it.” 

The path from second-grader to Webb Telescope engineer wasn’t an easy one for Granados, especially as a first-generation Latina woman in engineering, but she’s incredibly grateful for the education, resources and connections at UC Davis that helped her get there. 

“I knew which direction I was going, I just needed help getting there and that is exactly what UC Davis did,” she said. “There were so many resources that I took advantage of that really helped shape my career and get to where I am.” 

Read the full article at Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering