I am going to be part of a new ambassador program at work, which is a fancy way of saying that I’ll get paired with one or two newbies and help them understand the various non-work-related opportunities available on SLAC’s campus. I was asked to write a bio in order to give a prospective new hire some information about myself. So, here goes.

Born in 1994, Margaux is millennial who shamelessly orders shampoo and toothpaste (and sometimes groceries) from Amazon instead of driving all the way to the store. She started her career at SLAC in October 2015 as a mechanical engineer, fresh out of school and ready to do all the grunt work. At SLAC, she works on the LSST Camera, a 3.2 gigapixel camera being built for a telescope down in Chile. Margaux makes up a solid 20% of the Integration and Test engineering team, developing tools to assemble the delicate camera as well as verify that all high-level requirements have been met. Theoretically she’ll eventually get to go to Chile and help to actually install the camera. Fingers crossed.

Margaux holds a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from the California Institute of Technology (Fleming Hovse). She purposefully chose the opposite side of the country for college and has told her parents that she’s never coming home to Delaware, unless Christmas cookies or Mom’s famous ratatouille are involved.

Before coming to SLAC, Margaux spent almost a year teaching robotics to elementary and middle school students through after-school programs and summer camps. If she’s being honest, she was mostly having fun with Legos and taking a break from the stresses of engineering while getting paid. Her continued passion for STEM education has led her to volunteer with outreach groups at SLAC that aim to encourage local youth to pursue STEM careers, including SLAC Kid’s Night and the Greene Scholar’s Program. She’s also currently pursuing a master’s degree in mechanical engineering at San Jose State part-time, in addition to full-time work at SLAC, which might or might not have been a good life decision.

When she’s not wearing a bunny suit and overseeing the assembly of camera hardware in the LSST Clean Room, Margaux can be found at the SLAC gym scoring goals on the soccer pitch, completely missing serves on the sand volleyball court, and lifting heavy things over and over in the weight room in an attempt to justify all the homemade chocolate zucchini bread that she bakes and eats. She takes frequent trips to Yosemite and Tahoe and hopes to one day convince the bigwigs at SLAC to relocate the whole lab to the mountains. A girl can dream.