The sky's the limit

Jessica Aracely Gutierrez was 5 years old when her parents bought her older sister Nelly a computer.

"It was a Windows 95 Hewlett Packard. I was intrigued by it," said Gutierrez, 18.

It wasn't the keys on the computer that interested her. "I like knowing how it functions, what is behind it. What happens when you press that key," Gutierrez said.

The Porter High School senior graduates this year with a 3.58 grade point average, ranked No. 31 in a class of 476.

Already she has the distinction of being the first person in the world to remotely control the Parkes Observatory, a radio astronomy observatory north of Parkes in New South Wales, Australia.

Gutierrez will study electrical engineering at the University of Texas at Austin.

Daughter of Gabriel and Adela Gutierrez, she comes from a close family that includes her brother, Gabriel.

Her mother and sister are the "strongest women" she knows and points to her father's influence who came here from Mexico, not knowing English.

He established an air-conditioning business after study and perseverance. "He managed to do that. I can do it too," Gutierrez said.

In 2006, she was the 21st Century Astronomy Ambassador for the Center for Gravitational Wave Astronomy at the University of Texas at Brownsville and a program research leader. This year, she was a presenter at the 211th annual American Astronomical Society meeting.

She is also a member of the National Honor Society and has received awards in writing, agriculture and biotechnology design.

Her counselor Eduardo Noriega noted that Gutierrez is an extremely mature individual who is an "independent thinker and spirit," with a "strong inner voice" and intelligence "tempered with kindness and grace."