Emily Calandrelli received her bachelor degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Aerospace Engineering from West Virginia University. She is currently pursuing Master's in Technology and Policy and Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT. Emily has worked as a legislative intern for former Congressman Alan B. Mollhan, and as a research intern at NASA Glenn, NASA Ames Academy, the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, and at Jiaotong Universtiy in Xi'an, China. For her Master's thesis she is researching the applicability and effectiveness of contests as an open strategy to engage non-traditional NASA partners and to drive innovation for NASA technologies. As part of her thesis, Emily is working with the NASA Tournament Lab to provide a cost analysis for NASA contests run through the TopCoder challenge platform.