MIT Department of Aeronautics & Astronautics | November 2025 | | Weâre thankful for our community, food, friends, gratitude, generosity, Noelle (de Weck) â and the chance to celebrate it all at the annual Thankful Gathering! We hope you all get some well-deserved downtime and clear skies wherever the holiday weekend takes you. | | |
The Roundup is a monthly newsletter to keep the AeroAstro community up-to-date on research, community news, and important happenings across the department and MIT. Explore past issues of the Roundup on our website.
| | Brian Mernoff, Shreya Sharma, Garrett Seiman, and Tim caught this yearâs Beaver Moon, the full moon that marks the time of year when beavers prepare to settle into their lodges for winter. The November supermoon was the closest since 2019, shining just 221,800 miles from Earth. | | |
Spot Awards: Alexa Torres, Corrine Giordani, Esther Allen, Eunice Nganga, Karen Bruce, Marie Stuppard, and Ngan Le went above and beyond for our community in November! Have someone you would like to recognize? Submit a nomination any time â Spot Awards are open to everyone!
Staff update: A warm welcome to Michael Harrison, who joins AeroAstro from the Department of Chemistry as the new Program Administrator for the MA Space Grant Program.
The MIT Excellence Awards and Collier Medal are among the highest of MIT staff honors, and one of our most important ways to recognize employees for their contributions and celebrate their accomplishments. The 2026 nomination window is open now through December 5, 2025 at 5pm. Nominate a colleague today!
December is Universal Human Rights Month, a reminder of our shared commitment to dignity, freedom, equality, justice, and of the work we do in AeroAstro to foster an open, diverse, inclusive, and supportive community where everyone feels valued.
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Allan Shtofenmakher (DINaMo) received the Best Student Paper Award at the 2025 Advanced Maui Optical and Space Surveillance Technologies (AMOS) Conference for his paper âOptimal Tasking and Scheduling of Satellite Constellations for Space Situational Awareness.â
Alum Sophia Wang â24 was selected as a 2026 Rhodes Scholar. Wang is one of four MIT students and alumni named Rhodes Scholars this year and will begin fully funded graduate studies at the University of Oxford next fall.
A paper written by Prof. Nicholas Roy and the late Prof. Seth Teller has been selected as the co-winner of the 2026 AAAI Classic Paper Award. The paper, âUnderstanding Natural Language Commands for Robotic Navigation and Mobile Manipulation,â was chosen as the most influential from the Twenty-Fifth Conference on Artificial Intelligence.
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The AeroAstro Comm Lab provides 1-1 peer coaching sessions for all forms of technical communication. Make an appointment to improve the effectiveness of your next paper, poster, presentation and more!
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Check out our new digital resources:
Upcoming events:
| | Marek Homola (ICAT) reflects on the summer he spent interning at Air New Zealand â building connections, gaining in-depth experience in airline operations, and immersing himself in the beauty of New Zealand. | | Palak Patelâs (necstlab) radiation shielding research made it to the ISS aboard the JAXA HTV-X1 spacecraft. Over the next six to eight months, her nanocomposite samples will experience the harsh space radiation environment before returning to Earth for post-flight analysis. | | Massport hosted a group of graduate students from 16.886, Air Transportation System Architecture, for an airside tour of Boston Logan to help evaluate the operational feasibility of a concept for automated electronic taxi tugs. | | Daniel Rojas â27 and others from Course 16 attended the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers National Convention, an annual event that brings together thousands of Latino engineers from all over the country for career development workshops, inspiring talks, and a career fair. | Jason McKeever, Director of Science and Systems at Canadian aerospace company GHGSat, spent the day with students from 16.853 discussing GHGSatâs history, technology, and scientific findings. | | Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion | | |
Dear community,
As we wrap up 2025, I want to extend my heartfelt gratitude to the AeroAstro community for your dedication, engagement, and contributions to this yearâs Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) committee and events. I encourage you to take a moment to reflect on the lessons weâve learned together and to join us as we continue strengthening our welcoming, inclusion and engagement efforts in the year ahead.
On behalf of the DEI Committee, I would also like to express our deep appreciation to AeroAstroâs 2024-2025 Diversity Fellow, Menna Hussein, and the DEI Committee administrative staff, Echo Aodhan, for their exceptional leadership and unwavering commitment to fostering a welcoming and engaged AeroAstro community. I also want to recognize the outstanding work of Menna in spearheading the GAAP Leadership Program, and the GAAP Mentors. Thank you for your dedication.
Wishing you a joyful holiday season and looking forward to continuing our meaningful work together.
With gratitude,
Denise Phillips
Next DEI Meeting
Janine Liberty and Rachel Ornitz will present on AeroAstro's communications resources.
Thursday, Dec. 4, 1:30 - 2:30pm in 33-116
MSRP: Call for faculty members
Interested in getting involved with MSRP? Beyond serving as a faculty mentor, there are many ways to engage with MSRP interns and the program. Please take a moment to complete this brief survey so we can better understand how you'd like to participate.
Feedback:
aa-diversity@mit.edu
| | To stop deforestation, the solution may be out of this world | Seven years ago, Prof. Danielle Wood began a collaboration with Ghana to tackle deforestation. A new paper in Acta Astronautica outlines how using systems engineering methods and space-based data can empower developing nations to address their environmental challenges. | | Teaching robots to map large environments | A new approach developed at MIT could help a search-and-rescue robot navigate an unpredictable environment by rapidly generating an accurate map of its surroundings. | | | | |
