"She gets things done."
This is how colleagues describe Brooke Weborg, machine learning data scientist and engineer at NASA. Weborg was nominated as Digital Transformer of the Month for her work on the AI/ML (artificial intelligence/machine learning) consultation portal, the type of ambitious project that computer scientist Herb Schilling had seen fail in the past. "Some of these things that you try to do just get bogged down in people saying no. But [Brooke] was never fazed by that at all…she just went ahead with it." Reflecting on what makes Weborg a Digital Transformer, Schilling says, "A big part of digital transformation is communication, and she's just a really good communicator."
Although Weborg grew up near the Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio, she did not envision a career at NASA until college, where she studied computer science and engineering. Her professor Brent Nowlin, who still currently works at Glenn Research Center, encouraged her to apply for a Pathways internship, which she began in 2017. When considering how her educational background has led her to where she is today, Weborg says, "What I learned in college was that I really liked the algorithm portion of computer science. I enjoy puzzles and I feel I'm very much a middleman when it comes to projects…I love machine learning because it's kind of this middle process of figuring out the intricacies of the model." Her focus on the "middle" also comes through in how she describes the AI/ML consultation portal as a bridge, connecting the knowledge gap between users and experts at NASA.
