If you let Maryam Ali (E '25) talk to you about outer space, her eyes will light up with excitement. As I sat outside with Maryam during our interview, her animated explanations of how computer science can be used to make objects from hot air balloons to rockets fly up into the air were vivid enough that even I—a liberal arts girl to my core—just might show up to the next Penn Aerospace Club General Board Meeting. Shaped by her experiences as a student with family far from home, Maryam knows the importance of creating community while at Penn—whether she’s bonding with residents as a RA for Harrison College House, or engaging excited freshmen at an engineering club fair.
Towards the end of our conversation, Maryam indulged me in a video of the rocket she helped launch with M51 Space—a nonprofit organization founded by Penn students focused on educating students about the design and development of rockets. Though we had just met, it was clear that her lifelong interests in technology and outer space has been a guiding light for her, from high school in Lahore to her senior year at Penn, and beyond to wherever she goes next.
Name: Maryam Ali
Hometown: Lahore, Pakistan
Major: Computer Science, Minor in Mathematics
Activities: Penn Aerospace Club, Resident Advisor in Harrison College House, M51 Space
Can you tell me a little bit more about where you’re from?
Any time I get this question, I always think of a ping pong ball, because I feel like I've just been ping pong–ing across the world. I was born in Pakistan, and when I was two years old, I came to the US. I lived 11 years in Denver, and when I was 13, I moved back to Lahore and completed eighth grade, did the rest of high school there. And honestly, it was one of the best decisions I think my parents could have made for me and my family. It's something about being surrounded by people that look and speak like you, which is a unique experience of its own that I wasn't used to, considering that all of my existing memory at that point had been in a place like the U.S. and people are from everywhere. There's beauty in both of those things, but being at home was just so different. I picked up the language, Urdu, again. Whenever I call my mom, I'm constantly code switching between them.
It’s definitely made it hard though, because my family’s still [in Pakistan]. Going back home is not an easy trip—it's very expensive. You have to plan it out. It's made me really value my family more, living so far away and knowing that I only get to be home for like, say, two weeks at a time. I love it back home, Pakistan has taught me so much. I would eventually want to move back, maybe not right after graduation, but I know that that's where I want to be long term, and I wouldn't have felt that way if I hadn't moved back to begin with.
The experience of going from being a minority in the US to being around people who look like you sounds very powerful. When you’re at Penn, do you think of yourself as an international student?
It’s actually such a funny question, because I am a U.S. citizen, so by definition, I'm not an international student, but I feel like I have all the experiences of one. I can relate a lot to the students who maybe haven't seen home for a very long time, or, you know, people who literally have to budget out time to speak with their families because, oh, Mom's asleep right now. Now she's awake. Okay, gotta talk to her. In every sense of the emotion and the experience, I am an international student, even though logistically I’m not one.
I feel for the [international] students here a lot. My heart goes out to all of them. I know how hard it is to be away from family. And you know, for someone like me, family is honestly everything.
When you think of that feeling of loneliness here because you don’t have your family with you, how have you throughout your time at Penn found community? What does that community look like?
I think Harrison is the first thing I think of when I think about a community, because there's 24 residential floors, and each has an RA. We're a staff of 24, so there's 23 other people with me that I get to see on a weekly basis. Just last night, we had our first staff meeting. Some of my best friends here are also RAs. When I meet with them, I’m doing my job, but I'm also getting time with my friends. To me, that's what community is—it's the people who I kind of default to. Honestly, I don't know if this is a good or bad thing: I haven't really gone out as much at Penn as a student. The social aspect of being at Penn—and maybe this is just the engineering student in me—is just finding someone to sit down with and just be at peace even though we're both working.
Every little kid likes outer space, but was there something special that happened when you were younger that made aerospace the field you wanted to pursue?
My big sister was doing these space settlement design competitions. They were really big in Lahore, and you’d create a hypothetical space settlement with different departments. I have always wanted to be like her. I saw her doing those, and I thought, wow. And so I started doing them. I really, really liked the idea of that application and of space. I didn't know what the combination of computer science and space looked like at that point but in my head, I was like, there's got to be software engineers working at NASA. Once my mind settled on aerospace, nothing has amazed and fascinated me as much.
Of course, the engineering school and computer science can be very male dominated spaces. How have you learned to navigate that while at Penn, and what advice would you give to other women interested in computer science and aerospace?
There have definitely been moments while I've been at Penn where I have experienced firsthand what you're talking about. Sometimes it's something as little as your literal voice not being heard, and sometimes it can be body language. There can be so many different things that eventually come together and make you feel as though your impact is less significant than another guy in the room who probably doesn't have as great ideas as you do.
Thankfully, you know, in classes at least, I think the male to female ratio is actually pretty decent. Penn definitely admits a lot of women that know they're incredible, and they know that because they've put so much effort into getting here.
I have had moments here where imposter syndrome gets to me, and as a woman, it's definitely amplified. One thing I would say is that sometimes all it takes is that one moment for you to feel like you belong here. In order for you to find that moment, you need to try things out. You need to go out and pursue projects that are important to you, because no one can make you feel worthy the way that you can. You can read about it. You can have someone tell you. But until you genuinely feel it from yourself, it's really hard to actually integrate that into your own mindset.
For me, it came from being in clubs and eventually leading one, specifically leading the High Altitude Balloon team [with Penn Aerospace Club]. My whole team was full of guys and I was the only girl, but I was one of the leads. At that moment, it’s like “Oh, I hope that the other girls in this team can see that someone like me who has similar experiences to them, in regards to the male–female divide in STEM, can lead them.” At a place like Penn, there's so many opportunities, and you just need that one moment, those two moments that you can keep reminding yourself, wait, in that moment I did something.
I would love for you to talk more about your experience with Penn Aerospace club. How did you join this club, and what led you to lead this team?
I already knew aerospace was something I wanted to do, but first semester of freshman fall, I was so, so busy. In the spring, I was looking at club applications and saw that Penn aerospace was a thing, and at the time, the least daunting one was the high altitude balloon.
Sophomore fall, I, along with three other people, launched a high altitude balloon in Lancaster. We filled it up with helium, and we literally had to hold on to it with our hands. It was freezing, and we had gloves on, because you can't touch the balloon with your hands. We had brought out a huge tank of helium with us from the Engineering School. There's four of us, two of us are holding onto the balloon for dear life, because it starts to fill up with helium and it wants to go up, but you can't let it go yet. My hands were numb and in pain, but I did not want to show it, so I was like, alright, just deal with it, Maryam, and pray to God that this balloons’ almost full. We got the string attached and flew the balloon into the air. It was a really fun experience, knowing that you were part of the team that sent something into the sky.
After that it was a linear progression. I became one of the directors for the whole team. Recruitment was a great time when I became a director, because I really enjoyed speaking with people. At the ESAC fair, I had printed out little brochures for the high altitude balloon team but so no one else was going up and saying anything to students. I grabbed a few of the brochures as students were walking by, I just went up to them and asked, “Hey, are you interested in aerospace?” And they're like, “sure, space is great,” and then you get the conversation going from there. Because we were in engineering, and most of engineering is computer science, so one of our biggest selling points was that we have a fully software team, and a lot of other teams don't offer that. It's really nice having those conversations with students, and seeing how we had something for everyone.
In the spring, eventually, we handed it off to the new leads, and they were great. Now I've been seeing what they're doing more so on the back end. It's been fun, going from member to lead to now, being sort of a mentor. It just adds to that senior year feeling of, Oh, I'm about to go.
Can you talk more about your work with the aerospace nonprofit, M51 Space? How have you connected with other Penn students through that?
M51 Space is another aerospace team, but it's not affiliated with Penn clubs. I saw the flier in DRL, and it said, we build rockets. Of course, I was like, "this is what I want to do," and I signed up. I think the first semester I tried out, they weren't taking people who had a software inclination. In the spring, however, they gave me the green light. I was interviewed, and I got let in. I joined their avionics team, which has the more electrical software aspect.
It was led by an incredible student who, I think, just got back from working at SpaceX. So very, very ambitious people who love to take initiative. My co–avionics recruit and I were in charge of the payload, so we had two sensors we’re working with. We were working on collecting pressure, humidity, temperature, and positional data. We were looking at, when the rockets go up, what's its orientation? Actually, I would say that was when I realized that, plus a class I was taking, that I really liked the low level side of computer science—circuitry, hardware, some embedded systems.
That year, we ended up launching a rocket. We launched some rockets in Pittsburgh during the school year, and then in the summer, we flew out to California. We went to the Mojave Desert, and the rocket went up to like 12,000 feet. It was such a great show of engineering. I’d love to show you a video of it.
Favorite thing to do in Philadelphia: Go to Center City with my friends and window shop.
Most listened to song last month: "Diet Pepsi" by Addison Rae.
Your favorite show to binge watch: Recently, I’ve been watching a lot of Avatar the Last Airbender.
Favorite class at Penn: ESE 3500: Embedded Systems.
Favorite thing to cook: I guess it doesn’t count as cooking, but more than anything, my favorite thing to make is tea, especially London fog. I could drink 5 a day and it’d be okay.
There are two types of people at Penn... People who wear Canada Goose and people who don’t.
And you are? I don’t.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Do you know that one senior who brings a smile to everyone’s face or always has the craaaaziest stories? It’s time to give them the recognition they deserve. Ego of the Week seeks to showcase seniors not for their grades or any other fake academic construct, but for who they are as a person and the joy they bring to the people around them! Nominate your favorite Penn Seniors for Ego of the Week!
