Ariel Ekblaw founded and leads the MIT Space Exploration Initiative, a team of 50+ researchers, staff and faculty actively prototyping our Sci-Fi space future. Ariel’s PhD research explores autonomously self-assembling space architecture for future habitats and space stations in orbit around the Earth, Moon and Mars. Ariel graduated from Yale University with a B.S. in Physics, Mathematics and Philosophy, and leverages prior work experience in cloud computing analytics at Microsoft Azure, big data programming at the CERN particle physics laboratory, and Mars2020 rover systems engineering at NASA JPL. Her work has been featured in WIRED, CNN, the BBC, the WSJ, MIT Technology review and in over 15 invited talks and panels.