Margarita was born in Bulgaria, and completed high school in
Toronto, Canada. She went on to obtain a Bachelor’s Degree in
Aeronautics and Astronautics from MIT in 2003, and is currently a
graduate student in Planetary Sciences at Caltech.

Her goal is to merge knowledge of aerospace engineering and planetary sciences to design better instruments and gain a deeper understanding of natural systems.

Margarita has been involved in a number of field work expeditions, such as studying debris flows and setting up a weather station in the Canadian High Arctic, looking at carbonate structures in the Sahara, and measuring environmental factors including UV levels in the Atacama Desert, Chile.

Her research projects at Caltech focus on using Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) modeling to characterize planetary-scale impacts on the terrestrial planets and examining the Moon-forming impact.

At Pavilion Lake, Margarita is responsible for underwater instrumentation (temperature & light sensors), modeling water properties and light penetration, helping with weather station setup, and diving support.

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