Announcements

Go AeroAstro! U.S. News and World Report has again placed MIT’s graduate program in aeronautical and astronautical engineering first in their annual rankings.

Commencement season is upon us! Visit MIT's Commencement site for the full schedule of activities from May 28-30. Got any great photos of graduating students? Send them to aa-communications@mit.edu!

Upcoming events:

Check out more upcoming events on the AeroAstro events calendar – log-in required.

AeroAstro Spring Barbecue

Tuesday, May 13th

12-2pm

Building 33 lawn

Master’s Thesis Showcase

Wednesday, May 14

3-5pm

Ice Cream Social

Friday, May 30

12:30-2pm

Building 33 lawn

Guidance regarding current events

MIT’s Office of General Counsel (OGC) has prepared guidance documents for MIT community members, including students, to assist them in the event they are approached by law enforcement or immigration agents on campus or if they are traveling internationally. The International Students Office (ISO) posts regular immigration updates on their website.

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.

• Submit upcoming events to the Calendar (log-in required).
• Send us news about your research using this form.
• Visit the Communications Toolkit for resources and guidelines.

Community Corner

Does Jose Soto have to tear his backpack apart before takeoff? A whopping 29 “remove before flight” tags adorn it!

AeroAstro caught the Red Sox opening day fly-over from the rooftop of building 37.

Unified students spent some time enjoying the weather and testing a small jet engine for their "Jet Joe" lab. At max RPM, the model generates roughly 13.9lbs of thrust – not quite a Rolls Royce Trent XWB-97, but loud enough to get the idea!

HR bits

Awards: Beata Tunik, Anthony Zolnik, Janine Liberty, Pam Fradkin, and Rachael Draper are April’s Spot Award winners! Have someone you would like to recognize? Submit a nomination any time!

The AeroAstro Community Awards celebration is coming up in May! Join us Wednesday, May 7, in 33-116.

Leadership opportunities: Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) are an important part of MIT’s inclusive community, formed around common interests, bonds, or similar backgrounds. All ERGs are open for staff to join at any time. This year, Brian Mernoff will take on a three-year team of leadership of the Disabilities ERG, helping to provide a safe space for people with disabilities to share their stories and be heard, understood, and supported. 

Rachel Ornitz, with much cajoling, will step down from leadership of the LBGTQ+ ERG after her three-year term as co-lead of the LBGTQ+ Employee Resource Group. Ask her about all the spring “QStaff” events while you can, and reach out to her if you would like to get involved in ERG leadership!

Best wishes to Esther Allen on her engagement! They put a “wing” on it!

Congratulations!

Diversity Officer Denise Phillips has been honored with a 2025 MIT Excellence Award for “Embracing Diversity, Excellence, and Inclusion.” 

As of 2025, Prof. Zoltan Spakovszky is officially a member of the MIT Quarter Century Club, celebrating 25 years at MIT. Prof. Jon How was also formally inducted in 2024.

New research from QX Lab, "Optimal quantum state discrimination with fixed measurements" received a Best Paper Award at the 2025 International Conference on Quantum Communications.

Alvaro Martinez Sanchez (CTG) has been selected for the Nova 111 Student List 2025, recognizing the top 111 students under the age of 25 in Spain, for his outstanding work and leadership.

Mollie Johnson (ESL) was awarded a fellowship from the National Science Foundation for her work in space systems engineering.

Cambridge's Multicultural Arts Center named Prof. Dava Newman as the Margret & H.A. Rey Curiosity Award recipient as part of a 20th Anniversary Science Soirée.

The MIT team THERMOS (Translunar HEat Rejection and Mixing for Orbital Sustainability) has been selected as a Competition Finalist in NASA’s Human Lander Challenge! Wish them luck at their competition in June.

Prof. Wesley Harris has received the Outstanding Veteran First Year Advisor Award from the Undergraduate Advising Center for his dedication to first-year students and exceptional skills in advising. In addition, Prof. Jaime Peraire has received the Departmental Advising Excellence Award for outstanding dedication and support in advising upper-level students. Both will be honored at the awards ceremony in May.

CommLab

The AeroAstro CommLab provides 1-1 peer coaching sessions for all forms of technical communication. Make an appointment today to improve the effectiveness of your next paper, poster, presentation and more!

New resources:

Master’s Thesis Showcase Poster Templates and Best Practices

Highlights

MIT AeroAstro’s fifth annual SpaceTech Conference explored technologies of the future at the intersection of lunar exploration with life on Earth. ​Watch the video playlist and explore the photo gallery.

MIT’s Lonnie Petersen on the first medical X-ray taken in space: Performed in microgravity, 200 miles above the Earth’s surface, the imaging procedure could help keep astronauts safe and healthy on long-term missions.

PhD student James Dingley (STAR Lab) finally answered the question that has plagued both typography and civil engineering enthusiasts for, well, at least three years: “Which typeface’s capital I makes the best I-beam?” Watch the video on his award-winning YouTube channel “Atomic Frontier.”

Abby Lee (STAR Lab) completed her first Ironman in South Africa – placing 3rd for her age group and qualifying for the World Championship in the fall!

First-gen SM student Annabel Gomez went all-in on her dream graduate program after a last-minute tour of MIT – and we’re glad she did! Read her story on the MIT Grad Blog.

The Engineering Systems Lab continues to travel the globe, this time presenting three papers at the IEEE Systems Conference 2025 in Montreal, Québéc, Canada. Presenters included Prof. Oli de Weck and Lilly Etzenbach.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

Best Practices:

Being an active bystander

April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month

This year’s theme, "Together We Act, United We Change" highlights the importance of working together to address and prevent sexual abuse, assault, and harassment.

Upcoming DEI events

Submit DEI Feedback: 

aa-diversity@mit.edu

Research

ACL

DYNUS: Uncertainty-aware trajectory planner in cynamic unknown environments | Researchers developed a robot path planner that helps drones and ground robots safely navigate environments filled with moving obstacles and unknown areas—like forests, offices, or caves—without prior maps.

Space Systems Lab

Rotating synthetic aperture space telescope pointing control demonstration and scalability analysis | Researchers demonstrate accurate pointing control of a dynamically-similar rotating synthetic aperture space telescope using a three rotational degree-of-freedom hardware testbed.

REALM

Solving multi-agent safe optimal control with distributed epigraph form MARL | Researchers propose a novel multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) framework in the centralized training distributed execution paradigm using the epigraph form, improving training stability.

In the Media

Minnesota Public Radio | Astronomical costs? | Prof. Jeff Hoffman addresses the “astronomical costs” of space exploration.

The Ringer | An Astrophysicist Explains the “Most Promising” Sign of Alien Life | On an episode of “Plain English with Derek Thompson, Prof. Sara Seager answers questions about exoplanets, life, and aliens.

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