Announcements

Cheers to the Class of 2024!

The department wishes a heartfelt congratulations to all of our Course 16 graduates. 

It’s MIT Commencement week! The AeroAstro PhD Hooding and School of Engineering Advanced Degree Ceremony are on Wednesday, 5/29; the OneMIT Commencement Ceremony is on Thursday, May 30; and the Undergraduate Degree Ceremony takes place on Friday, May 31. Please visit the commencement website for full schedule and details.

AeroAstro Ice Cream Social

Friday, May 31 at 12:30pm: Come together as a community and celebrate the outstanding achievements of our graduates with delicious frozen treats! 

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.

• Submit upcoming events to the Calendar (log-in required).
• Send us news about your research using this form.

Community Corner

This month AeroAstro said bon voyage to Dept. Head Steven Barrett, enjoyed a surprise Aurora over Boston, and celebrated the end of the semester with delicious bbq on the lawn.

Congratulations!

The Community Recognition and Awards ceremony honored the outstanding work of 17 individual AeroAstro community members across department roles. Check out the list of our 2024 honorees.

Nicole McGaa (HSL) and Alvin Harvey (HSL) were both recognized for their contributions to diversity, equity, inclusion, and social justice on and off campus with MIT RISE Awards in April.

Jonah Goldstein (STARLab) was selected by the Undergraduate Advising Center Awards Committee to receive the First Year Student Award in Academics and Research. 

Prof. Olivier de Weck’s textbook, “Technology Roadmapping and Development: A Quantitative Approach to the Management of Technology,” received the Most Promising New Textbook Award from the Textbook and Academic Authors Association. In a 3 Questions article with MIT News, he discusses the practical applications of the strategy.

Hyuntae Lim (SPARK Lab) and colleagues won first place in the Nothing Stands Still Challenge at the 2024 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation for their work using outlier-robust perception.

HR Bits

Spot Awards: Congratulations to Bryt Bradley, Karen Bruce, Robin Courchesne-Sato, and Miroslava Parsons on being recognized this month, and thank you for all you do for the department.

Career Development:

Assess Your Values Workshop – Explore the ways your values impact and intersect with your career journey.

Recreation:

Become a member of MIT Recreation and be a part of a community that focuses on health, wellness, and active living. Explore health insurance reimbursement opportunities through most health care plans for potential rebates.

Highlights

This May, numerous members of the AeroAstro community flew on parabolic flights, bringing research and representation to zero gravity through the MIT Space Exploration Initiative and Aurelia Institute’s Horizon program. 

The MIT Rocket Team has successfully tested its bi-propellant liquid rocket engine, the culmination of a seven-year-long project. 

Portugal’s second-ever satellite, AEROS CubeSat, launched this spring to study ocean health, developed in a 4-year collaboration with the MIT Portugal Program.

Andy Eskenazi (LAE) taught a course called “How to CAD Almost Anything” during IAP. Following the course’s success and popularity, it's been added to MIT OpenCourseWare. He’s also teaching a new version of the course to members of the MIT community this summer.

ARCLab was featured in the spring issue of Corridor for their research on space sustainability.

In April, Lincoln Laboratory staff, MIT faculty, and students attended a Lincoln Scholars and Military Fellows Appreciation Luncheon, an annual celebration of the achievements made possible by collaboration between Lincoln Laboratory and university researchers, as well as the accomplishments of the fellowship recipients.

Karen Bruce taught May's Maker Monday participants how to design and create custom iron-on vinyl designs for t-shirts and tote bags.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

DEI Best Practice:

Asian Women in STEM Careers: An Invisible Minority in a Double Bind

Barry Boseman, Monica Gaughan

May is Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, honoring and celebrating generations of Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders who have enriched America's history and are instruments in its future. Asian/Pacific encompasses all of the Asian continent and the Pacific islands of Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. 

The month of May was chosen to commemorate the immigration of the first Japanese people to the United States on May 7, 1843, and to mark the anniversary of the completion of the transcontinental railroad on May 10, 1869 – a project accomplished in large part due to the work of Chinese immigrants.

Research

AMSL

Electrostatically actuated X-band mesh reflector with Bend-Formed support structure | The researchers present an architecture for increasing the size of radio frequency antennas in space for communications, remote sensing, and astronomy.

ESL

Evolution of system connectivity to support food production in the Indus Basin in Pakistan | Models for informing sustainability interventions in complex adaptive systems involving nature-society interactions are challenging to construct due to lack of detailed, quantitative data on the changing structure of system interactions. Here, MIT researchers develop an approach combining qualitative descriptions of system components and interactions, with network representation for quantitative characterization of system structure. 

CommLab

Summer is the perfect time to catch up on updating your resume, portfolio, website, and more. The AeroAstro Comm Lab is here to help with 1-1 peer coaching sessions for all forms of technical communication. Make an appointment today to improve the effectiveness of your next paper, poster, or presentation!

New Workshops and Resources:

• Creating Video Abstracts: Thursday June 13, 1-2:15pm, 33-206
• Guide to Time Management Quick Tip Poster
• Getting Started on Your Paper: The Skills Nobody Taught You

Comm Lab manager Brian Mernoff will be presenting his work integrating inclusive design into the Comm Lab and technical communication practices on a panel as part of a side event to the United Nations COSP17 meeting on 6/10 at 10am. Register for the event, “Informed and Included: Strategies for Overcoming Information Barriers,” on their website.

Website | Email | Facebook | Twitter | Youtube | Instagram | LinkedIn