Ariel Ekblaw

Dr. Ariel Ekblaw is the founding CEO of Aurelia Institute and GP for Aurelia Foundry Fund, a hybrid space architecture research institute and venture incubation studio; she also founded the MIT Space Exploration Initiative, a team of 50+ students, faculty, and staff building and flying advanced technology for space exploration. Ariel graduated with a B.S. in Physics, Mathematics, and Philosophy from Yale University and designed a novel space architecture habitat for her MIT PhD in autonomously self-assembling space structures. Her research work and the labs she leads build towards future habitats and space stations in orbit around the Earth, Moon, and Mars. Ariel is the author/editor of Into the Anthropocosmos: A Whole Space Catalog from the MIT Space Exploration Initiative (MIT Press 2021), serves on the NASA Lunar Surface Innovation Consortium (LSIC) Executive Committee, and holds an appointment as Visiting Researcher at the Center for Radical Transformation at the Chiba Institute of Technology. Ariel’s work has been featured in WIRED, Harvard Business Review, the Wall Street Journal, the BBC, CNN, NPR, numerous academic papers, and more.