Osiyo! My name is Hailey Polson, and I am a proud Citizen of the Cherokee Nation from Claremore, Oklahoma. I am a senior at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, majoring in Aerospace Engineering and minoring in Public Policy.

As a leader in the Indigneous Community at MIT, I have served as AISES chapter president for two years as well as captain of the NASA Artemis Student Challenge First Nations Launch rocketry team, MIT Doya, for two years, during which the team won the Grand Prize Award. I am also involved in the AeroAstro department, serving as an officer for our American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. I have conducted undergraduate research as part of the Human Systems Lab as well as worked on two projects in the Engineering Systems Lab, Advanced Space Technology Roadmapping Architecture (ASTRA) and Sustainability Evaluations of Lunar Environment Exploration (SELENE). I am also Brooke Owens Fellow, a member of the class of 2026 Ring Committee, and a TA. In my free time, I love engaging in community service and outreach projects.

I hope to help us expand our knowledge of the universe and our home planet as a space systems engineer. So far in my career, I have had the privilege of interning as a mechanical engineering intern in the Space Science and Security Program and Science and Technology assessments groups at Lawrence Livermore National Labs, as a lunar payloads intern on the Mark I Vehicle Integration Systems Engineering Intern at Blue Origin, and as a systems engineering intern for the Space Systems Engineering Group at Johns Hopkins Unviersity Applied Physics Laboratory.

Throughout the past three years of my college experience, AISES has provided me with unparalleled opportunities for personal and professional growth. It is my honor to help create some of those same life-changing opportunities for others by serving as the Region 6 Student Representative, furthering AISES’s mission of increasing Indigenous representation in STEM.