Grazelle Mae Viloria sets her sights beyond the sky’s limit

Grazelle Mae Viloria from Saipan graduated from the University of California Irvine’s Henry Samueli School of Engineering last June 16, 2023, with a Bachelor of Science in Aerospace Engineering. (CONTRIBUTED PHOTO)

Among the small number of women who have completed their courses at the University of California Irvine’s Henry Samueli School of Engineering, a homegrown daughter of the CNMI is making the islands proud after graduating with a degree in the rarefied field of aerospace engineering.

Twenty-two-year- old Grazelle Mae Viloria from Saipan was one of the small number of women in her entire Class of 2023 to complete and graduate with a Bachelor of Science in Aerospace Engineering last June 16, 2023. There were fewer than 15 women who graduated in Viloria’s entire class and she takes pride in being one of them.

It was her dad who inspired her to pursue engineering. “It grew from wanting to follow in my dad’s footsteps of becoming an engineer, my love of seeing airplanes fly, one day contributing to the advancement of space exploration, and inspiring the next generation of young women to pursue an engineering degree,” Viloria said.

As a child born and raised on Saipan, Viloria is an alumna of the San Vicente Elementary School, Eucon International School where she attended middle school, and later at Grace Christian Academy until her junior year of high school when she relocated to the United States and went to the Colony High School in Ontario, California. She graduated high school with high honors in May 2018 and was soon accepted to the University of California Irvine’s Aerospace Engineering Program.

After a gap year in the United States, Viloria began taking classes at UCI in the fall of 2019, and began getting involved in a number of university project teams to build small-scale airplanes and satellites. She also secured an internship with an aerospace company the summer after her junior year. Her final senior project was a conceptual design for a commercial aircraft.

All these successes came with some challenges, Viloria said. “ I was a working student all four years of college (working part-time and going to school full-time), in addition to receiving multiple scholarships that helped cover the cost of attending university,” she said.

In her final year at the university, Viloria was able to land numerous job interviews from top aerospace and defense/space companies and even received three job offers before the end of the school year.

“Although it was an extremely tough decision to choose between the three offers, I [eventually] accepted a manufacturing engineering position with Lockheed Martin,” she said. Viloria will be joining the company in the next few months.

Part of her future plans is “to gain as much experience and knowledge as an early-career engineer in my field, so that I may contribute to the advancement of aerospace technology and space exploration.”

Viloria also made sure to note that she couldn’t have done any of these accomplishments on her own, but expressed her gratitude for her family friends and community who raised her, crediting them for her successes. “I wouldn’t have gotten through this major without the support of my family and friends. I also would not have been as academically-driven if not for my professors, teachers, previous supervisors, and mentors throughout my academic career. I would like to extend my thanks and gratitude to every single one of you, as you have each contributed to my successes. There are honestly too many of you to count.”