Member Spotlight – Nabiha Saghar

 Nabiha Saghar is a fourth year student majoring in physics at the University of Alberta. Her love for poetry and writing also led her to minor in creative writing. She started her journey at AlbertaSat in September of 2022. In the time she has been part of AlbertaSat, she has become the science and outreach lead for the CAN-RGX Spidersat mission, outreach coordinator for the Cubics mission, and the deputy team lead of the Iris team.  

It was a friend she met at the climbing gym who convinced Nabiha to join AlbertaSat’s outreach team and to pursue projects for the club’s technical teams. She was driven by her love for space, “engineering related things without the engineering specific trauma”, as well as the fascinating links between science and art. She mentions that there are many areas of research that we take for granted here on Earth that become completely different in space – such as mechanical design, and orbital, and microgravity dynamics. 

Nabiha’s role in AlbertaSat covers a wide variety of responsibilities, from leading AlbertaSat outreach initiatives such as classroom sessions at the Jasper Dark Sky Festival, to designing and testing optical assemblies for the Iris team. She started her journey in AlbertaSat with the CAN-RGX team, Spidersat. Recently, using data from the campaign as well as ground testing, she presented her first paper as main author at the International Astronaut Congress 2024. Her love for sharing science knowledge and her dedication to inspiring people of all backgrounds to find their place in STEM and in the space industry have driven AlbertaSat’s outreach program to new heights. 

Outside of AlbertaSat, Nabiha loves bouldering, crocheting, learning to play different instruments, and her cat. She aspires to pursue a research career relating to condensed matter physics. Fun fact: Nabiha has even flown a plane before!