Before Marilee Karinshak arrived at WashU — before she won a Goldwater scholarship, interned twice at NASA, and helped lead the women’s soccer team to back-to-back national championships — she was already thinking about community and connection: How people find one another, how systems work together, and how technology can help close the distance between them.

As a high school student in Lawrenceville, Georgia, Karinshak created lighthearted TikTok videos to promote “The Zoom University,” an online community designed to help young people stay social during the COVID-19 pandemic. One video, featuring a group of students dancing to Jason Derulo’s “Savage Love” from their individual Zoom screens, racked up more than 250,000 views. “It brought some humor to an otherwise serious situation,” she said.

When it was time to apply to college, Karinshak looked for a place where she could pursue her two main interests: biology and soccer. “When I visited the WashU campus, everyone seemed so open and eager to work with one another,” she said. “I knew this was where I wanted to be.”

She wasted no time making the most of WashU’s opportunities. As a first-year student, Karinshak joined a biology lab studying plant defense mechanisms, a project that she would continue through her junior year. That summer, she landed a communications internship with NASA where she shared findings from the Ecological Forecasting Program, an initiative that uses satellites to track changes in the environment. “I highlighted NASA's capabilities to support conservation through satellites,” she said. “I got to talk to a lot of scientists who were doing that research, and I became fascinated with the possibilities of remote imaging.”

That fascination stuck. Inspired, she applied for a second NASA internship to do her own satellite-based research. In the summer of 2024, she tracked atmospheric pollution in coal-producing regions of Virginia, using satellite imagery to identify areas of concern along the coastline. “With that information, the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality was able to place air sensors in places where they would do the most good,” she said.

Her work soon took her even farther afield. During the spring of 2025, Karinshak studied abroad at the University of Sydney, where she used satellite and drone-based imaging to track an irrigation project in the dry fields of southeast Australia. “We were helping farmers battle drought, which is a big problem in that area,” she said. “I also got to spend some time camping in the Outback, which felt like a long way from home.”

Despite the demands of her high-flying research, Karinshak also found success in soccer. She appeared in all 23 games and scored four goals as a first-year player. An injury sidelined her for her sophomore year and limited her playing time afterward, but it never pulled her away from the team. She continued to attend practices and meetings, supporting her teammates however she could. “I tried to be the glue who helped everyone get along and stick together,” she said. “When you’re on a team with a lot of success, you can also feel a lot of pressure.”

Karinshak racked up wins on and off the field. She was an academic all-UAA (a recognition for top student athletes in the University Athletic Association) in her sophomore, junior, and senior years, and she appeared in a total of 17 games for the Bears’ back-to-back national championship seasons of ’24 and ’25. Her leadership didn’t go unnoticed: She was named a team co-captain for her senior season.

In her junior year, Karinshak was awarded a Goldwater Scholarship, a prestigious award for sophomores and juniors in the natural sciences, mathematics, and engineering. In her senior year, she and biology senior Omar Abdelmoity were named finalists for a Rhodes Scholarship, one of the world’s highest academic distinctions.

Balancing elite athletics with ambitious research is no small task, but Karinshak was determined. “Marilee has an innate ability to schedule her time, balance her demands, and multitask,” said Karen DeMatteo, Karinshak’s academic advisor. “She manages to take things further than even she thought was possible.”

After graduation, Karinshak plans to apply her science background to roles that connect research, technology, implementation, and real-world impact. “I want to help ensure that emerging technologies are used in ways that positively benefit people and their communities,” she said.

Whether she’s building community online, taking a pass from a midfielder, or using satellite data to understand a changing planet, Karinshak is thinking about goals. She’s already scored more than a few.