•Most promising engineer - Undergraduate•

Education:  Master of Science in Electrical and  Computer Engineering, Johns Hopkins University (2025); Bachelors in Electrical Engineering, Florida International University; Certificate in Architecture and Systems Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Taking to heart her mother’s counsel that “It is in giving that we receive,” Karina Quintana developed a passion for inspiring underrepresented minorities to pursue STEM education and began contributing valuable research in her field while still a college undergraduate. 

As an National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering scholar and an undergraduate research assistant in the RF/Electromagnetics Lab at Florida International University, Karina focused on wireless power transfer and wearable devices. During this time, Karina published papers and presented them internationally. She also gained valuable hands-on engineering experience while pursuing her first degree.

Having benefited from two GMiS scholarships as a student, she resolved to help other groups underrepresented in STEM by founding a new campus organization called FIU Research, Internships, and Scholarships in Engineering (RISE), whose  mission is to give students a platform to gain technical experience and access financial aid.  RISE has given more than 1,500 South Florida students the valuable opportunity to design and present engineering projects.

Today, less than 10 years into her career, she has risen to the role of Lead Payload Engineer on a key Boeing government satellite communications program while actively promoting STEM careers to underrepresented minority groups, beginning with an internship with F/A-18 and EA-18G Test and Evaluation at China Lake, California. 

As a full-time employee she began conducting developmental flight testing on the F/A-18 and gaining expertise in advanced airborne radar and weapons systems. The multi-role F/A-18 is an essential asset for the US Marine Corps and several international fleets. 

Karina served as the Foreign Military Sales Lead Systems Engineer on the F/A-18 Hornet Block, responsible for managing all systems engineering efforts for five international customers across six programs totaling $862 million.

After ably supporting the F/A-18 program for five years, Karina took on a new challenge as a Digital Processing Subsystem Engineer in El Segundo, California, supporting an Internal Research and Development project assessing performance of laser communications terminals. Demonstrating technical aptitude in optical communications, she designed and demonstrated a real-time system that is still in use in a laboratory environment.

Today, Karina is a Digital Communications and Radio Frequency Payload System Engineer with Boeing in El Segundo, serving as Lead Payload Engineer on the Rapid Prototyping Phase of the Evolved Strategic SATCOM program. She leads 10 engineers across all technical and programmatic payload system engineering efforts. ESS provides survivable and endurable worldwide satellite communications capability for ground, sea, and air assets in the Nuclear Command, Control, and Communications mission area. 

 Karina’s work has been recognized with numerous individual and team awards at Boeing. In 2019, she received the Boeing China Lake Engineer of the Month and Engineer of the Quarter awards in recognition of her exceptional customer focus in evaluating an APG-73 radar software release for the Finnish Air Force. In 2022, she won the Boeing El Segundo Seal Beach Employee of the Month award for going above and beyond assigned duties and delivering critical solutions for customer-focused milestones.