MIT Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics | December 2020 |
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This solution-adapted mesh for the High Lift Common Research Model airfoil was created using the Boeing GGNS flow solver and the EPIC grid adaptation toolsets developed by Carmen Ursachi (PhD student in ACDL) and Dr. Marshall Galbraith (Research Engineer) in collaboration with Boeing, NASA, and INRIA (the French national research institute for digital science and technology). Their work was a featured graphic in Aerospace America Year in Review. Image credit: Boeing
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A Note from the Department Head |
Dear AeroAstro Community,
This has been a difficult year for all of us. As I look back and reflect upon our experience this year, despite the many challenges we have faced this year, we have been able to accomplish a great deal, and I am very proud.
As we look ahead to 2021, one of the projects I am most excited about is finally underway: a new AeroAstro website. If all goes according to plan, we expect to launch by early Fall 2021. The first phase is the Discovery process, where we solicit feedback from key stakeholders and members of the community in order to identify our strategic priorities to incorporate within the scope of the project to help us chart a path forward. There is a set of questions provided by the vendor we have partnered with to help guide your thoughts around the project goals and objectives, identity and image, and how we can take inspiration from our peer institutions. I encourage all members of the community to submit your feedback by visiting this link, or by emailing your responses to aa-website@mit.edu by Jan. 15.
This is your opportunity to weigh in with your ideas and share your pain points to help us identify how we move forward in designing a new website. The project will be moving along in earnest, and this Discovery phase is just the first of many steps along the way to a new website. While we may hear many great ideas, the reality is that we are limited by time, project scope, and budget. To that end, we will not be able to incorporate every idea that we hear, and we will not be able to address every pain point we have. However, I am thrilled with the initial plans I have heard so far, and look forward to the excitement a new website will bring!
I hope the holiday season brings good tidings for you, your family, and your friends. Please enjoy a restful break and continue to be safe and well while celebrating the new year.
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Daniel Hastings
Department Head, MIT AeroAstro
Cecil and Ida Green Education Professor
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Call for MSRP Faculty Mentors
MSRP’s goals include increasing the number of underrepresented minorities (American Indian, African American, Hispanic American, and Native Hawaiian or U.S. women in certain disciplines) and underserved (e.g. low socio-economic background, first-generation college, veterans) students in the research enterprise, and to prepare and recruit the best and brightest for graduate education at MIT. Many of the participating interns already have a solid foundation in research; as a faculty mentor, you will have the opportunity to guide an undergraduate in honing their skills, while they explore whether MIT is a great match for their future studies.
Because this effort is a priority of the Institute and the Office of Graduate Education, the OGE and Schools share the budget for intern costs including stipend, housing, and travel; faculty members are not asked to financially contribute.
AeroAstro Community Drawing Sessions Jan. 5 & 7
MindHandHeart and the Division of Student Life are launching a Community Quilt to connect MIT community members scattered across the globe. All MIT students, postdocs, staff, faculty, families, alumni, and families (spouses, partners, and children) are invited to contribute a square drawing answering the question: "Where do you find hope?"
In January, the squares will be combined into a digital quilt. At a later date, the squares will be turned into fabric quilts that will be displayed across MIT's campus. No drawing skills are necessary and simple designs are welcome.
On Jan. 5 & 7, AeroAstro will host
community drawing sessions open to all MIT students, postdocs, staff, faculty, families, alumni, and families (spouses, partners, and children) to create your squares. Learn more about the MIT Community Quilt.
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Humans Interacting with Autonomy Workshop
Wed., Jan. 13
10 a.m. – 3 p.m. EST.
Zoom information forthcoming.
Participants will include superstar faculty and postdoctoral researchers doing work in the field. We will sample the area from different perspectives (e.g., human factors, controls, AI), and generate connections between the speakers and more junior workshop participants (i.e., grad students), as well as faculty at MIT working in areas of interest. Additional information will be forthcoming, but please mark your calendars now. (Note to AA faculty: Although faculty will break at 12pm to join the weekly Department lunch, we will be arranging breakout rooms for our students, postdocs, and workshop participants.) Learn more.
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Noteworthy News, Awards & Honors: |
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The MIT Portugal SMART project is the winner of AI Moonshot Challenge. The SMART project (diStributed AI system for mArine plastic debRis) is the winner of the international AI Moonshot Challenge competition. The project will receive €500K to develop and implement their solution to tackle marine plastic pollution using AI and satellite data technology.
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Danielle Wood has been invited to serve on the newly formed ISS National Laboratory User Advisory Committee.
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AeroAstro-CSE PhD student Michael Brennan was selected to give an oral presentation at the 34th Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 2020), for his paper "Greedy inference with structure-exploiting lazy maps," co-authored with former AeroAstro research scientist Daniele Bigoni, former AeroAstro PhD student Alessio Spantini (PhD '17), former AeroAstro postdoc Olivier Zahm, and Prof. Youssef Marzouk. Oral presentations at NeurIPS are very competitive, and represent the top 1.1% of all submissions!
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Youssef Marzouk, Jaime Peraire, and Cuong Nguyen are part of Center for Exascale Simulation of Materials in Extreme Environments (CESMIX), a new research effort based at the Center for Computational Science and Engineering (CCSE) within the MIT Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing. CESMIX will focus on exascale simulation of materials in hypersonic flow environments. It will also drive the development of new predictive simulation paradigms and computer science tools for the exascale.
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Carmen Ursachi (PhD student in ACDL) and Dr. Marshall Galbraith (Research Engineer) co-authored a paper with colleagues from Boeing, NASA and INRIA (the French national research institute for digital science and technology) which has received the Shahyar Pirzadeh Memorial Award for the Outstanding Paper in Meshing Visualization and Computational Environments by the AIAA. The paper entitled "Comparing Unstructured Adaptive Mesh Solutions for the High Lift Common Research Model Airfoil" (AIAA-2020-3219) is an outgrowth of Carmen’s Master’s degree thesis for which Marshall was her advisor. This is the second year in a row Marshall and ACDL graduate students have been part of a team that have received an AIAA best paper award for work in adaptive methods for computational fluid dynamics.
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Sara Seager has been named an officer of the Order of Canada, one of the country’s highest civilian honors as recognition “for her multidisciplinary research that has contributed to transforming the study of extrasolar planets into a full-fledged planetary science.”
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Alumna Jin Stedge’13 was named to Forbes 30 under 30: Enterprise Technology for her role cofounding the company True North, a carrier and software service that helps independent truckers manage all aspects of their business, from invoice tracking to fuel and insurance and compliance issues.
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Recipients of Spot Appreciation Awards for the month of December include: Karen Bruce (x2!), Jei Lee Freeman, and Ngan Le.
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Jonathan How presented a semi-plenary talk at the 2020 IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, and has been selected to give a plenary talk at the AIAA Guidance, Navigation, and Control during the SciTech conference in January 2021.
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A research project led by Anirban Chaudhuri, IRIS-RBDO, or information reuse for importance sampling in reliability-based design optimization, was featured in the Progress toward the 2030 vision for CFD in Aerospace America: 2020 Year in Review.
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Special shout-out to Justin Francos! Thank you for everything you have done for AeroAstro!
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On Dec. 23, the first section of the new wind tunnel shell was hoisted into position on the north side of the site. The curtain walls for the connecting lobby between 17 and 33 are in place and have been water tested. Interior work has begun and drywall will start being installed the first week of the new year. |
Daily work hours for the WBWT construction crew continue from 6 a.m.– 4 p.m. Some Saturday work may be expected. Construction is scheduled to continue through Spring 2021.
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Diversity, Inclusion, & Innovation (DI&I) |
DI&I Best Practices
Dear AeroAstro Community,
As we conclude 2020, I write to share my sincere thanks and appreciation for your commitment, action and engagement in this year’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion events. I encourage you to reflect on lessons learned during these challenging time as we think about advancing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in AeroAstro in 2021. Wishing you a Happy Holiday Season and I look forward to our work together in the New Year!
Your feedback on DI&I is important and valuable to the Department. Please submit your feedback at the links below.
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Successful ~*VIRTUAL*~ Thesis Defenders |
Congratulations
Dr. Nicholas Greene!
December 14, 2020
Leveraging Prior Information for Real-time Monocular Simultaneous Localization and Mapping
PI: Nick Roy
Congratulations
Dr. Andras Kiss!
December 21, 2020
Forced Response System Identification of Gas Turbine Fan Flutter
PI: Zoltán Spakovszky
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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"I was the only person in the waiting room, and I sat there wondering if I was drastically overreacting to the entire situation. How many healthy, athletic 30-somethings have a stroke out of nowhere?"
Charlotte Lowey, AeroAstro grad student and avid runner, recounts her 2020 experience recovering from an ischemic stroke and journey getting back into running form for the MIT Grad Admissions Blog.
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Below are a few highlights of AeroAstro publications and media coverage: |
Dava Newman
Tech Crunch
John Hansman
Quartz
Danielle Wood
Nova Now podcast
Rachel "Tumble" Williams’12
CNN
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2020 has been a dark year for all of us. To end the year on a positive note, we asked the AeroAstro community to share moments of light, big and small, they have experienced over the last nine months because we could all use a little more goodness and light this year.
#Bye2020
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Chris Clark: I have spent a lot of time hiking the Skyline Trail at the Blue Hills Reservation this year. This is a photo I took last weekend. I would highly recommend it for those interested in hiking and the outdoors—it’s probably my favorite outdoor destination in the Boston area.
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Raina K. Puels: Something that has gotten me through these challenging times is taking an hour walk every day! I haven’t missed a day since mid-March. On my walks, I focus on looking for little things to photograph. This picture (attached) I took in the spring reminded me of AeroAstro and the little moments of humanity we can still find throughout this pandemic.
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Sara Cody: While I do miss campus, I don't miss my hour+ commute on the train/subway/bus, and have loved spending extra time with my three girls: (left to right) Eva, Mavis, and Hazel! Their sweet snuggles and funny faces have kept me going this year!
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Paula do Vale Pereira: I was looking for an electronic connector at a local electronics store, which we definitely have in the lab so if it wasn't for Covid, I wouldn't have gone shopping. At the store, I found a bunch of Discmans and VHS tapes!!! LOL It made my week!
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Submitted by: Pam Fradkin
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Submitted by: Joyce Light
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It has been a BIG year for the STAR Lab with lots of exciting activities in the lab and in the virtual classroom, including the DeMi launch and deployment from the ISS, CLICK-A flight build and environmental testing, Prometheus probe and ice exploration, 16.831 speaker-vibration testing and final presentations in Spring 2020, and 16.851 final presentations in Fall 2020!
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On Dec. 11, we hosted our annual AeroAstro holiday party on Zoom! Attendees were shipped special snacks to enjoy during the call. After Dan's customary toast, Joyce Light led us through a cell phone photo scavenger hunt, and then everyone went around introducing themselves one-by-one. We ended the evening with games and other activities, including Family Feud, paper snowflake making, crossword puzzles, Skribll.io, and a holiday tour of Vienna set to festive music. Special thanks to Joyce light for planning and hosting, and to Karen Bruce, Hannah Ovaska, and Sara Cody for assisting with the activities! Screenshots by Dan Jang. View holiday party photos from 2020 and 2019.
(Below) Dan Jang and Sara Cody snapped photos of their special holiday party snacks: pecan praline banana bread and a steaming mug of Spanish hot chocolate!
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AeroAstro alumni Raja Chari SM '01, Jasmin Moghbeli '05, and Warren “Woody” Hoburg ’08, were among the group of 18 astronauts to form the newly-established Artemis team, which will help tackle the preparations necessary for early moon missions to help establish a modern lunar exploration program. Under the Artemis program, NASA will land the first woman and the next man on the moon in 2024, with the ultimate goal of establishing a long-term human presence on the lunar surface by the end of 2029. Read the full story from MIT News.
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On Dec. 16 the new balance for the Wright Brothers Wind Tunnel was moved via crane from the hangar of Building 33, where initial calibrations occurred, and into the balance room underneath the new test section.
(Below) Mark Drela, Dave Roberston, Trevor Long, and Anthony Zolnik were on-site to assist with the move. View the full album.
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6.0001 and 6.0002 is a popular programming and computational thinking class in which students learn the fundamentals of computer programming (in Python) and are introduced to algorithms in data science. Professors Dave Darmofal (AeroAstro) and Laurent Demanet (Math) co-taught 6.S082/16.901/18.S091 Introduction to Computational Science and Engineering (CSE), a new variation of 6.0002 set in the context of computational science and engineering.
Examples were drawn from across science and engineering including dynamics, mechanics, robotics, heat transfer, climate science, chemistry, biology, aerospace, and others. Topics included computational algorithms to: simulate time-dependent phenomena; optimize and control applications from science and engineering; and quantify uncertainty in problems involving randomness, including an introduction to probability and statistics. This is the first subject taught in the Schwarzman College of Computing's "Common Ground" intended to support the development of computing-focused, interdisciplinary subjects. This fall, 27 students from across the Institute took the subject, with 66 percent of the class being first-year students with 10 students reporting being in Course 16 or being interested in an AeroAstro degree. The subject will be offered again in the spring.
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Our Favorite Memes of 2020 |
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Shoutout to Nick Perovich, Pam Fradkin, Paula do Vale Pereira, Sara Cody, Hannah Ovaska, Kathryn Fischer, and Joyce Light for contributing!
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On Friday, March 13, 2020, Sara Cody and Anthony Zolnik made a quick pit stop to take a photo with their favorite meme, who made a surprise appearance on the chalkboards of the Stata Center. This would be their final official act on the MIT campus before quarantine.
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Do you have highlights to include in future editions of the Monthly Roundup?
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