Celebrating Aurelia’s 2026 interns and volunteers
Aurelia Institute was proud to host four students to work on a number of core engineering, design, and business projects.
Aurelia’s internship program is an important part of our mission to train and prepare the next generation of space professionals. This summer, Aurelia Institute was proud to host four students to work on a number of core engineering, design, and business projects.
Aviya Afra
Aviya Afra is an architecture student at Barnard College of Columbia University specializing in space architecture. At Aurelia, Aviya collaborated with Aurelia's Senior Designer Max Pommier on two projects: drawing up a new taxonomy for the Space Architecture Trade Study Database, and developing a location coding scheme with visual cues and interfaces for the TESSERAE Orbital Biolab.
Aditya Kaushik
Aditya is a rising freshman at UMass Amherst majoring in mechanical engineering with a passion for space exploration, CAD modeling, and 3D printing. Adi’s primary role at Aurelia was to support the development of our TESSERAE Transform system through mechanical design, component selection, and electrical wiring of a handheld controller unit meant to wireless control the motion of the tiles. He also supported other efforts including system simulation work, optimizing 3D printing methodology, and aiding in our patent application.
Lily Malloy
A senior at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business, Lily worked with Aurelia Foundry this summer. She worked on due diligence for several new startups, helped to manage existing portfolio relationships, and elevated value-add through research into the government contracting landscape and sharpening the Foundry’s round-building CRM. Lily also led market analysis during a transformative summer for the space industry, kicked off by SpaceX's record-setting IPO.
Caroline Perez-Fraga
Caroline is a rising junior at the Polytechnic School in Pasadena, California. At Aurelia, Caroline assisted the engineering team with microgravity video documentation and editing, 3D printing support, and CAD work. She also worked with the strategy team to identify outreach opportunities for STEM groups in the greater Boston area for Aurelia programming opportunities.