Grad hopes to advance women’s health in space

The massive steel tubes at NASA's Kennedy Space Center towered into the sky, but 7-year-old Priya Abiram had no idea what they were.

"They're rockets," she remembered her dad telling her. "They're the hardest things that humans have ever built, and it is even harder to fly them."

Fifteen years after that vacation in Florida where she started dreaming of space, Abiram '25 is graduating with her M.Eng in aerospace engineering and heading for a career in the space industry, advancing the understanding of how human bodies work in space and how to build systems to keep them alive.

She serves as the director of research at the nonprofit Operation Period, where she and her colleagues plan to fly a device that simulates a uterus to space to study how microgravity impacts fluid movement, menstrual flow dynamics, and the performance of pads and tampons.

Abiram is working toward a future where periods are no longer taboo and when long-duration space flight without suppressing menstruation is commonplace. As humans explore space and possibly one day live on other planets, space travel must be designed for all bodies, she said.

"Space systems are built around this default human body," she said. "I want to be able to change what it means in terms of not only accessibility to space, but also on Earth. Women's health has been on the back burner for so many years."

Journey to space

Abiram has had her license to fly a plane solo before she could drive a car.

In ninth grade, she joined the Civil Air Patrol, the volunteer auxiliary of the U.S. Air Force. That opened doors to learning how to fly. She also became cadet commander of her unit, leading 120-plus students. She created an aerospace research program there, with modules in space medicine, model rocketry, aviation and robotics. The program expanded nationwide among other units.

She said she felt like the shy girl in the corner when she first joined the organization.

"I always struggled to step out and speak in front of large groups of people," she said. "I struggled to articulate my thoughts."

With encouragement from her mother - who literally pushed her into the path of the commander at an open house - and mentors within the air patrol she gained confidence.

She said her parents' open-minded support helped her find her passion in space research, something she is energized to wake up and work on every day.

"My parents always gave me a full degree of freedom to explore absolutely everything," she said.

In sixth grade when Abiram proclaimed she wanted to be a professional swimmer, her mom didn't say it wasn't realistic. She signed her up for advanced swim lessons.

Abiram always came back to space, though, and ended up following in her parents' footsteps into engineering. Her mother worked in the automobile industry and her father as a software engineer, but Abiram was aiming at the sky.

At Cornell

Abiram earned her bachelor of science in mechanical engineering from the Cornell Duffield College of Engineering in 2025. She said one of her most memorable experiences was working on the Alpha CubeSat project, a student-built satellite that traveled to the International Space Station in 2025.

"I got to work with really cool equipment and research labs at Cornell," she said. There were these giant thermal vacuum chambers where they tested the satellite before it went to space to make sure all these different sensors work in the vacuum of space and the thermal cycling conditions of space and the different pressure conditions. That was an incredible experience."

She also joined the Cornell Rocketry Project Team, where she helped develop the rocket's autonomous landing system. By the end of her second year, they could get the rocket to fly in a square during descent using a parachute. By her third year, they had even more control.

"It was a really cool journey to be able to have those successes on our test launch and during competition," she said.

She was co-president of Women of Aeronautics and Astronautics and is current president of the Quill and Dagger Senior Honor Society.

She also interned at NASA and with commercial aerospace companies like Boeing, Blue Origin and Vast.

Meanwhile, she continued pursuing opportunities to train in extreme conditions, like living as an astronaut at a former NASA training facility on top of a volcano in Hawaii and participating in underwater training for egress rescue operations, such as ocean rescues for astronauts.

She also completed parabolic flights to experience microgravity. During one of those flights she helped a pair of doctoral students from the University of Toronto 3D print skin while floating, which has applications in wound healing and surgery in space.

"I love to be in rooms where I challenge myself," she said. "I love to be in spaces where I can grow and expand the most."

Making a fish fly

Abiram likened putting a human into space to taking a fish out of water and making it fly. The engineering challenges to keep humans safe in space are enormous, and she is working at the intersection of aerospace and biology.

Mason Peck, the Stephen J. Fujikawa '77 Professor of Astronautical Engineering in Duffield Engineering, said understanding how the human body functions in space is crucial to further space exploration.

"Priya is passionate about space-technology research and our species' future beyond Earth," he said. "She's pursuing exciting and novel ideas, and I expect great things from her."

After five years as a Cornell student, she's excited for the next chapter, but coming to the end of her Cornell career is bittersweet, she said.

"I finally got the hang of how to do well in my classes, how to balance stuff and how to do college and still have a life and spend time with people I care about," she said. "I'm definitely going to miss this environment."