Announcements

Students, staff, and faculty gathered at the annual AeroAstro picnic on the lawn of Building 22 to celebrate the start of classes.

Welcome to the MIT fall semester at AeroAstro!

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.

• View and submit upcoming events on our Calendar (log-in required).
• Send us news about your research using this form.

Community Corner

The MIT AeroAstro Spot Award Recognition Program provides an opportunity for members of the community to express appreciation for a colleague, to recognize someone’s contribution or exceptional work, and to acknowledge the unexpected ways that support, administrative, technical, and research staff at MIT go beyond their assigned duties every day. These awards can be given during any point in the year.

Spot Award Recipients

Karen Bruce

Pam Fradkin

Anthony Zolnik

Nominate a staff member here.

Congratulations!

Prof. Nancy Leveson was awarded the International Sustainable Aviation and Energy Research Society (SARES) 2023 Lifetime Achievement Award, given at the International Symposium on Sustainable Aviation in Taiwan in July.

Jayant Sabnis, senior lecturer in aeronautics and astronautics, received the School of Engineering Distinguished Educator Award, presented to a faculty or teaching staff member whose teaching contributions are consistently characterized by dedication, care, creativity, and inspiration to students and colleagues.

Sandro Salgueiro (ICAT) received the Orville and Wilbur Wright Graduate Award from the AIAA. 

Rashmi Ravishankar (Engineering Systems Lab) was awarded an MIT Energy Fellowship for the academic year 23-24. The fellowship is awarded by MIT Energy Initiative in support of her research applying artificial intelligence to satellite imagery for energy and sustainability applications.

Prof. Sertac Karaman was awarded a J-WEL grant for his proposal, “Partnering with an Indigenous tribe to bring a successful STEM program for creating autonomous vehicles to the middle-school level.”

AeroAstro Highlights

The first asteroid sample returned to Earth: Prof. Post-Tenure Richard Binzel describes how asteroid dirt and dust delivered by OSIRIS-REx, with help from MIT, may reveal clues to the solar system’s origins.

A green future for aviation? With the Zero Impact Aviation Alliance (ZIAA), MIT convenes industry leaders to address challenges and opportunities across the value chain.

Envisioning Robot Teammates: MIT Museum highlights the interactive exhibition with the IRGO robot developed in Prof. Julie Shah’s Interactive Robotics group.

This summer Prof. Zack Cordero hosted the 2nd annual workshop on materials challenges in reusable liquid-propellant rocket engines. 

The paperback of The Work of the Future: Building Better Jobs in an Age of Intelligent Machines by David Autor, David A. Mindell, and Elisabeth B. Reynolds (MIT Press) will be published on October 3.

Astro Portraits - Pointing the lens toward our future: Evan Kramer’s (Space Systems Lab) latest foray into urban astrophotography puts the focus on his fellow researchers.

This summer, research scientist Afreen Siddiqi (Engineering Systems Lab) presented research talks at three different conference events.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI)

DEI Best Practices

Article by Beronda L. Montgomery, Jualyanne E. Dodson, and Sonya M. Johnson

Guiding the Way: Mentoring Graduate Students and Junior Faculty for Sustainable Academic Careers

Celebrate National Hispanic American Heritage Month September 15-October 15, 2023

National Hispanic Heritage Month is a time to recognize and celebrate the rich histories, cultures, and contributions of Hispanic and Latinx Americans, including those whose ancestors came from Spain, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central and South America. During this month-long celebration, various events, activities, and educational programs take place nationwide to highlight the achievements and diverse heritage of the Hispanic and Latinx communities.

About National Hispanic Heritage Month

Smithsonian National Museum of the American Latino

NASA Celebrates National Hispanic Heritage Month

DEI Annual Report

We are pleased to share the AY-22 DEI Annual Report developed by the AeroAstro DEI Committee. Please note the options to provide your feedback on the Annual Report:

1. Via email to aa-diversity@mit.edu

2. Online anonymous feedback https://bit.ly/40HEtOZ 

Thank you for championing our efforts in AeroAstro as we embark on our quest for DEI excellence.

The DEI Committee welcomes new Graduate Students to AeroAstro!

Graduate students participated in a DEI poll at Orientation. Here is what they said in response to the question below:

Research

Planning algorithm enables high-performance flight

With this new approach from researchers in AERA and LIDS, a tailsitter aircraft, ideal for search-and-rescue missions, can plan and execute complex, high-speed acrobatic maneuvers.

A faster way to teach a robot

A new technique from the Interactive Robotics Group helps a nontechnical user understand why a robot failed, and then fine-tune it with minimal effort to perform a task effectively.

Model-Free Neural Fault Detection and Isolation for Safe Control

A new paper published in IEEE Control Systems Letters by researchers in REALM addresses the issue of detecting faults in robotic systems.

3 Questions: Honing robot perception and mapping

Profs. Luca Carlone and Jonathan How talk about their groups’ Kimera-Multi project and the future of how robots might perceive and interact with their environment.

CommLab

The AeroAstro Communication Lab (Comm Lab) has a new home! Come visit us in 33-320. The Comm Lab provides 1-1 peer coaching sessions for all technical communication. Make an appointment today to improve the effectiveness of your next paper, poster, presentation and more!

Check out our new CommKit articles! These articles are quick guides to different aspects of technical and professional communication, designed to be specific to AeroAstro.

• Portfolios - by Sarah Demsky
• Figure Design - by Harsh Bhundiya
• Accessible Communication - by Brian Mernoff
• First Ph.D. Committee Meeting - Sydney Dolan

In the Media

Nature | The Indigenous rocketeer: Nicole McGaa combined Indigenous knowledge with engineering to lead MIT’s team in building a rocket for the First Nations Launch competition. 

NASA | Oxygen-generating experiment MOXIE completes Mars mission

Washington Post | Opinion: We need to get our space junk problem under control

by Thomas G. Roberts (ARCLab) 

IEEE Spectrum | MIT looks ahead to hydrogen’s aviation future 

Featuring Prof. R. John Hansman 

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