MIT Department of Aeronautics & Astronautics | February 2022 |
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Join the AeroAstro Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, and (DEI) Committee
If you’re interested in becoming a new member, please complete the Google interest form by Feb. 28. The DEI committee meeting will be scheduled bi-weekly, currently, via zoom. To ensure represented and diverse voices and opinions at the meetings, the committee meetings are open to the entire AeroAstro community.
Your participation in the DEI Committee is voluntary. We certainly encourage your engagement on diversity, equity, and inclusion issues in AeroAstro. As part of the committee, you can expect a time commitment of at least two hours a week for the 2022 academic year. Here is the link to our Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee work so you can better understand the Strategic and Implementation Plans.
For additional information, please get in touch with Denise Phillips at dap1@mit.edu.
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For AeroAstro Grad Students: Participate in Astro Portrait Photo Project
Calling all current AeroAstro graduate students! Thanks to funding from the MIT Office of Graduate Education, a photo project will take place during March and April 2022 that aims to create “Astro Portraits” — composite images taken from MIT campus building roofs with a foreground featuring AeroAstro graduate students posing with their research and sharing their graduate student experience against an inspiring astronomical background like the example above. The objective of this work will be to showcase innovation and technological advancement from the next generation of AeroAstro scientists and engineers by creating a gallery titled “The AeroAstro Next Frontier Gallery.”
These images may be shared by MIT News, the AeroAstro Department, displayed as part of a physical art installation on campus, and on various other platforms digitally and in physical print form. If this opportunity sounds interesting to you and you would like to be considered as a potential subject for a shoot, please fill out this form. Be on the lookout for follow-on email communications on the project in the coming weeks! If you have any questions, please contact Evan Kramer at ekramer3@mit.edu.
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March 2: SoE Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Distinguished Speaker Series
Wednesday, March 2
2:30-3:30pm ET
Our Journey to Equity-Centered Engineering
Alec D. Gallimore, Robert J. Vlasic Dean of Engineering at the University of Michigan
This event will be virtual – registration is required. Email Greg Soloviev at soloviev@mit.edu to confirm your attendance and request the Zoom link.
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Save the Date for SpaceTech 2022 on April 27
Wednesday, April 27, 2022
Location: Hybrid (Held in-person on MIT campus and virtually online)
Registration is required. Details to follow.
Save the date and join us for SpaceTech 2022! This year’s day-long conference will feature remarks from former NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, Dr. Joel Mozer, Chief Scientist from the United States Space Force Operations Command, Dr. Debra Emmons, Chief Technology Officer of Aerospace Corporation, and Sita Sonty of the Boston Consulting Group. The event will also stream a panel of alumni experts hosted by the MIT Sloan Club of New York, featuring Jenn Gustetic, Director, Early Stage Innovations, NASA (MIT TPP), Dr. Farah Alibay, Systems Engineer, JPL (MIT AeroAstro), and Patrick Zeitouni, Head of Space Mobility, Blue Origin (MIT Sloan).
You’ll also be able to watch the first-ever Aerospace 10K Competition “Pitchfest,” where participants will pitch their startup business ideas focused on entrepreneurial aerospace innovation to a panel of expert judges for a chance to win a $10K prize. The Pitchfest is part of the new Certificate in Aerospace Innovation offered by the MIT Department of Aeronautics & Astronautics in collaboration with the MIT Innovation Initiative and the Martin Trust MIT Center for Entrepreneurship.
Additional information, including Zoom links, will be shared at a later date.
Note: This is an MIT-only event for which Touchstone authentication is required.
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Nominate Staff Colleagues for SoE Staff Spotlights
SoE Staff Spotlights, an effort developed in collaboration with the co-chairs of the Staff Advice and Implementation Committee (SAIC), recognizes exemplary SoE staff members for their contributions and dedication to the school through features that shine a light on each individual. Perhaps someone took a few extra steps to help you out today, supported you at a time when you most needed it, or simply shares a daily dose of positivity and encouragement – whatever your reason, we know there are countless deserving colleagues awaiting a nomination. Visit the SoE intranet to nominate a colleague today!
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In January, SAE released a new Recommended Practice Standard for using System-Theoretic Process Analysis (STPA), a new hazard analysis method created by Nancy Leveson and John Thomas, in evaluating safety-critical systems including software and human-machine interactions.
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Congratulations to Carmen Guerra-Garcia and her family, who welcomed baby Samuel on January 16!
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Carolina Furtado, a postdoc in necstlab, has accepted a faculty position back at her alma mater the University of Porto in Portugal.
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Jeonyoon Lee, a postdoc in necstlab, has accepted a faculty position at his alma mater, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST).
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Elwyn Sirieys received an MIT Robert B. Guenassia Award from the Office of Graduate Education in January.
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Tara Venkatadri was named a 2022 Churchill Scholar. She will embark on a year of graduate studies in the U.K. starting next fall pursuing an MPhil in engineering.
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Soumya Sudhakar was among the five MIT students selected for this year's Accenture Fellows.
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Sonya T. Smith was highlighted by her alma mater, the University of Virginia (UVA), for her service to the UVA Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering (MAE) Academy Distinguished Alumni Board.
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Spot Award recipients for the months of January and February include: Quentin Alexander, Todd Billings, Karen Bruce (x3!), Sara Cody (x2!), Julie Finn (x2!), Kathryn Fischer, Joyce Light, Fran Marrone, and Anthony Zolnik (x3!). Learn more about how you can recognize your colleagues (note: click "LOGIN" on the top right menu to log in via Touchstone and view internal pages) with AeroAstro's Spot Recognition program.
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AeroAstro was well-represented at AIAA SciTech 2022!
Held in San Diego, California on January 3-7, the theme this year was “Enabling Sustainability Through Aerospace Technology.”Graduate student attendees included (below, left to right) Harsh Bundiya, Ara Mahseredjian, Marek Travnik, and Carter Waligura.
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Several members of Space Enabled presented papers and participated in panels and talks at the American Geophysical Union Conference in December. Dr. Minoo Rathnasabapathy presented keynotes at the 1st IAA (International Academy of Astronautics) African Symposium on Small Satellites and the 5th African Space Generation Workshop.
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A recently-published collaboration between researchers in necstlab and the Robust Robotics Group was highlighted by the European Synchrotron (ESRF), where they “describe how they trained a machine learning system (specifically a deep learning (DL) artificial intelligence (AI) model) based on a convolutional neural network (CNN) to identify regions of damage induced in aerospace-grade carbon-fibre composites within a tomography dataset. Such a CNN machine has potential to accelerate discovery within new datasets and it almost eliminated the time-consuming human effort typically associated with segmentation of the data.
Reed Kopp, first author on the paper, explained, ‘For each 3D scan, what we used to do in 10 hours we can now do in 1 hour, and without human intervention. For example, for the 30 scans captured as part of a multi-day beamtime mission, it takes 60 working days for a human vs 2 days for a computer to deal with the data.’”
In addition to Kopp, paper authors include Joshua Joseph, Xinchen Ni, Nick Roy, and Brian Wardle. Read the full paper published in Advanced Materials.
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Members of the Interactive Robotics group, including Mycal Tucker, Huao Li, Siddharth Agrawal, Dana Hughes, Katia Sycara, Michael Lewis, and Julie Shah published "Emergent Discrete Communication in Semantic Spaces" in the Conference and Workshop on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) in December. Their paper described their approach where they used ideas from natural language processing to influence how neural nets developed their own, simple, language, and we showed how that learned language was interpretable by people.
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Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) |
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Town Hall In-person Meeting:
Monday, March 7
2:30-4 p.m.
4-270
Best Practices
Article: Advancing Diversity in Higher Education
By Caroline S. Turner
California State University, Sacramento
In honor of Black History Month, we will co-host various events in February in collaboration with the ICEO and student groups. We strive to celebrate Black people's achievements all year, not just for one month. I ask that you reflect and recognize African American pioneers for their contributions to this country. As we stand on the shoulders of those who had come before us, we must also provide space for Black brilliance to push the boundaries of academic excellence and to pave the way forward. As we celebrate Black History Month 2022, who will you honor?
Black History Known Fact: Black History Month 2022 Theme: Black Health and Wellness. The theme for 2022 focuses on the importance of Black Health and Wellness. “This theme acknowledges the legacy of Black scholars and medical practitioners in Western medicine and other ways of knowing (e.g., birth workers, doulas, midwives, naturopaths, herbalists, etc.) throughout the African Diaspora. The 2022 theme considers activities, rituals, and initiatives that Black communities have done to be well.” Learn more about Black History Month at the Association for the Study of African American Life and History.
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DEI Annual Report Feedback:
We are pleased to share the Annual Report developed by the AeroAstro DEI committee, chaired by Professor Paulo Lozano. Please view the DEI Annual Report, Implementation Plan, an updated DEI Strategic Plan, and additional initiatives at https://bit.ly/2XV kh1N .
Please note the options to provide your feedback on the Annual Report
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Via email to aa-diversity@mit.edu
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Online anonymous feedback https://bit.ly/3FYKU6c
Thank you for championing the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, efforts in AeroAstro as we embark on our quest for DEI excellence.
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MIT Medical offers many wellness resources to all members of the MIT community on topics ranging from exercise and fitness, family support, wellness coaching, stress reduction, and more. Click here for an overview of these offerings. You can also visit the class website to find resources — on campus, online, or elsewhere — that might help make things a little easier.
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Successful Thesis Defenders |
Dr. Berk Ozturk
Global and Robust Optimization for Engineering Design
January 6, 2022
Dr. Zhenyu Liu
Decentralized Inference and its Application to Network Localization and Navigation
January 14, 2022
Dr. Alexa Aguilar
Multiple Simultaneous Optical Links for Space-Based Platforms
February 16, 2022
Did you successfully defend your graduate thesis? Send a photo to aa-communications@mit.edu to be featured as one of our Successful Defenders!
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“In this inaugural talk, President Barabino laid out a well-reasoned, data-intensive analysis of why an emphasis on diversity and inclusion makes a difference. At an organization like MIT, with such a strong focus on technical excellence, we are particularly attuned to the value of data. As we move forward in our own efforts to support diversity, equity, and inclusion, it’s helpful to see their impact quantified in this way because it aligns with the importance of our decision to incorporate them directly into our core Institute values.”
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Below are a few highlights of AeroAstro media coverage: |
Julie Shah
The Economist
Miles Lifson and Richard Linares
Space News
Danielle Wood
The Daily Beast
Bruce Cameron
Science Friday
Dan Rutherford, Sebastian Eastham, Inés Sanz-Morère, Joonhee Kim, and Ray Speth
The International Council on Clean Transportation
Oliver Jia-Richards and Paulo Lozano
Forbes
Popular Science
Sara Seager
Vox
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Meet our new Diversity Fellows for 2022! |
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In their new role as Diversity Fellows, Bazyli and Annick are looking forward to planning events in the coming year to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion in the department. If there are any discussion topics you would like to explore or cultural events you’d hope to celebrate together as a department, please let us know here.
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Annick DeWald
Annick (she/her) is a Ph.D. student in the International Center for Air Transportation working with Professor John Hansman on a long-endurance solar aircraft concept for earth observation. While at MIT, she has served on the Graduate Women in Aerospace Engineering (GWAE) board as chair of the advocacy committee and president. In these roles, she has organized professional development events, facilitated a mentoring program for incoming members, and developed department strategies for combatting gender-based bias and harassment. Annick is a founding member of QuASAR, a department affinity group for members of the LGBTQ+ community and allies. She currently serves on the planning committee, organizing social and professional development events. Lastly, Annick has been involved in GAAP (Graduate Application Assistance Program) since its conception, where she has aided applicants from underrepresented backgrounds throughout the application process.
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Bazyli M. Szymanski
Bazyli grew up in Warsaw, Poland, and came to MIT in 2019. He is a Ph.D. student in the International Center for Air Transportation (ICAT) studying airline revenue management problems under Dr. Peter Belobaba. He is an active member of the MIT Grad Hillel and the MIT European Club, where he serves as a Social Chair and co-organizes the European Career Fair. He has played in the badminton and soccer AeroAstro Intramurals teams and has recently picked up curling! In his role as Diversity Fellow, Bazyli is looking forward to advancing AeroAstro’s DEI goals and contributing to the well-being of all in the departmental community.
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Celebrating the Year of the Tiger! 🐯
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To celebrate Lunar New Year and ring in the Year of the Tiger, the AeroAstro Diversity Fellows organized a field trip to watch the Chinese New Year Parade in Boston’s Chinatown on Sunday, Feb. 13!
Also, a friendly reminder that the DEI events fund is available should you want to take the lead on planning a department event. You can find more information can here.
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Ifueko Nosakhare Igbinedion and Cadence Payne participated in a panel hosted by the San Francisco Public Library and Career Girls where they discussed Black women role models who use their creativity and knowledge to be creators and innovators in honor of Black History Month.
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The MIT Student Veterans Association was honored as one of five finalists in the Student Veterans of America Chapter of the Year award. Andrea Henshall attended the ceremony, noting that many veterans in the AeroAstro community contributed to this honor. In the photo above (from left to right): Jared Lyon, President and CEO of the Student Veterans of America, Henshall, and Jamie Gray Hyder, actress, model, and producer.
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On Saturday Jan 29, Paula do Vale Pereira was a featured speaker at TEDxBocaRaton in Florida. She spoke about searching for life outside the Earth, some of the technologies that get us out there, and the lessons she has learned while exploring space. We will share a link to her video recording in a future issue of the Roundup when it is available on YouTube!
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Michael Schmid was featured on the podcast “Safety Corner," where he discussed a systems approach to safety. He explained how a systems approach to safety is more effective than what is done currently and how he applies this approach to his research, which focuses on making artificial intelligence safe for applications such as autonomous cars, autonomous air vehicles, and other tasks that are safety-critical. Listen on Spotify.
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In one of AeroAstro's newest courses launched in the fall of 2021, students learn how computation collides with the physical world in 16.0002. Developed through the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing’s Common Ground for Computing Education, the course is part of a multidepartment initiative that aims to blend the teaching of computing and other disciplines. This course focuses on innovative applications of computation and uses real-world problems, including simulations like the Martian lander.
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Sara Seager was featured in a Vox video series about hunting for exoplanets.
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Can you spot the Brass Rat in space?! NASA astronaut Raja Chari SM '01 snapped this photo from the Cupola of the International Space Station, where he is currently on station as part of the NASA and SpaceX Crew3 mission! Along with Chari's Brass Rat you can see his mission patches as part of Crew-3 and Expedition 66 missions.
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Applauding the culture of aerospace engineering
Tiera Fletcher ’17, a structural design engineer working on building NASA’s Space Launch System, and her husband Myron Fletcher spoke with the hosts of The Real about what inspired them to pursue careers in aerospace engineering and their organization Rocket with the Fletchers, which is aimed at introducing youth to the field of aerodynamics. Full story via The Real.
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Do you have highlights to include in future editions of the
Monthly Roundup?
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