My name is Elena Kamis and I’m from the lovely town of Orchard Park, NY aka home of the Buffalo Bills! I am majoring in Aerospace Engineering here at the University of Illinois and love it! I spent most of my younger years doing activities including building circuits with old Christmas lights, putting together model rockets, sailing wind-powered toy cars and watching way too much Animal Planet. It was clear from the start Engineering was a likely path for me, but a Graigner Engineer has been everything I expected and more. In my free time, I am an active member of the Illinois Space Society (ISS), acting previously as the Engineering Council (EC) Representative, SEDS Chapter Representative, Educational Outreach Director, Senior Advisor, and Social Media Manager. I’ve competed with my friends in the NASA Space Grant 2017 placing third, NASA RASC-AL 2018 as a finalist team, and High Altitude Ballooning projects for the 2017 Solar Eclipse. I love my major because of the number of opportunities provided to me in the four short years I’ve been on campus. I feel like I’ve squeezed a lifetime of activities into my undergrad and wouldn’t want to be anywhere else! In the future I hope to end up somewhere on the East Coast as a Systems or Operations Engineer!