Watch all episodes on YouTube ↗ · New episodes posted throughout the school year.
From ion thrusters small enough to sit on a coin to megawatt-class plasma engines for deep space, Dr. MacArthur walks through the full spectrum of electric propulsion and what each world looks like from the inside.
Dr. Jia-Richards is building spacecraft that adapt in real time, merging propulsion physics with machine learning to create autonomous systems that recover from hardware failures mid-mission.
Teaya Yang's drones don't need GPS. Her research focuses on autonomous navigation and multi-robot coordination through shared sensing, building systems capable of operating in environments humans cannot access.
Dr. Deng's lab builds structures that behave intelligently with no electronics at all; encoding decision-making directly into geometry and redefining how engineers design adaptive aerospace structures.
Air traffic is one of the most complex engineered systems on Earth. Dr. Li uses data-driven modeling to make it safer and more resilient; this means rethinking a network already moving 50,000 flights a day.
Dr. Hubbard was NASA's first Mars Program Director, the person handed the job of rebuilding the entire Mars program after two consecutive mission failures. Pathfinder, Astrobiology, and what leadership at that scale actually looks like.
Dr. Roberts uses observational astronomy and computational astrodynamics to study how space actors engage with governance: orbital congestion, the rules of the road in space, and what happens when no country is in charge.
One of the world's leading experts in computational fluid dynamics, Dr. Cummings has collaborated with NATO and spent decades studying airflow around high-speed vehicles. His path from Hughes Aircraft to the Academy.
A candid conversation with someone a few steps ahead. Marty walks through what graduate-level aerospace research actually involves day to day: choosing a lab, balancing coursework and research, and where a master's degree takes you.
The episode that started it all. Sneha walks through the reality of PhD life in aerospace: finding a research focus, what surprised her most about grad school, and why she chose to dedicate years to a single hard problem.
Our next episode is in production. We're heading to MIT. Stay tuned.