Shonte Wright is a Thermal Engineer in the Thermal and Propulsion Engineering Section at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). She received her B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California at San Diego (UCSD). While at UCSD Shonte found the heat transfer and thermodynamics portion of the curriculum to be particularly fascinating. This interest motivated her to pursue an M.S. in Mechanical Engineering - with an emphasis in the thermal sciences, at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University (NCAT).

While at JPL, Shonte has worked on a variety of projects, most recently the Mars Exploration Rover (MER). On the MER project, Shonte was a Thermal Systems Engineer responsible for tracking and verifying thermal resources and functional requirements; regarding these matters she was the technical interface with systems engineering, all thermal elements, and project management. Shonte's systems engineering role was extended to include heater design and qualification, flight hardware instrumentation, and spacecraft thermal testing.