Aeronautical engineering was the only thing Ivett A. Leyva ever wanted to do.

“I thought there was nothing cooler. I always wanted to be able to build rockets,” said Leyva, the newest senior aerodynamicist at Microcosm Inc., an aerospace engineering company based in El Segundo.

Leyva, originally from Torreon, Mexico, got her bachelor’s degree in math and physics from Whitman College in 1994, and another bachelor’s in engineering and applied sciences from Caltech. She topped those off with a master’s and doctorate degree in aeronautical engineering, also from Caltech.

After graduating in 1999, Leyva spent four years working for General Electric Co., on projects including detonation engines, domestic gas ranges and micro turbines.

Leyva then worked for a short time at Exponent Inc. as a thermal sciences engineer, and joined Microcosm in January of this year.

She is currently working on a program funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the central research and development organization for the Department of Defense. Leyva said she could not divulge specific details about the project, but did say it’s a three-phase initiative in its second phase to build a rocket launch system. It’s expected to take at least two to three years to complete.

“(This is) a very complex system and the challenging thing is that everything has to work at the same time,” Leyva said. “There are hundreds of components, and just to put them together and make them work all at once is more difficult and more time consuming than anything else but also more fun.”

Leyva is 33 and has been married for two and half years to Brian Holm-Hansen, an engineer who works for Lockheed Martin Corp. They live in Playa del Rey. She is active in her church and goes jogging with her husband in her free time.