Ariel Ekblaw

Both of her parents were pilots with the United States Air Force. and attended New Fairfield High School in New Fairfield, Connecticut. Ekblaw earned her BS cum laude from Yale University in 2014, double majoring in physics, and Mathematics and Philosophy. During her time at Yale, she co-founded Yale Women in Physics. Ekblaw was a research assistant at CERN particle physics laboratory where she wrote code for data analysis and researched supersymmetry. She was an assistant and member of the flight crew for a reduced-gravity aircraft as part of a NASA zero gravity experiment. In 2014 and 2015, she worked as a data analyst for Microsoft Azure. Ekblaw continued her studies at MIT Media Lab, earning her MS in distributed systems in 2017. Her graduate dissertation was on a blockchain application for medical records called MedRec. She interned briefly at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and earned her PhD from MIT in space architecture in 2020. Her doctoral advisor was Joseph A. Paradiso and her thesis was "Self-Aware Self-Assembly for Space Architecture: Growth Paradigms for In-Space Manufacturing". ==Career==

MIT Space Exploration Initiative Ekblaw founded the MIT Media Lab's Space Exploration Initiative in May 2016. The initiative annually runs around 15 microgravity experiments and has sent several projects into space, including a propellant experiment launch with Blue Origin and construction material tests and plastic-eating enzymes which were sent to the International Space Station. Some of the initiative's designs were inspired by NASA'S 1975 Summer Study. Aurelia Institute Ekblaw co-founded the non-profit Aurelia Institute in September 2021 with Danielle DeLatte and Sana Sharma. She serves as CEO of the organization, which was a spinoff of the MIT Space Exploration Initiative. The institute focuses on the research and development of advanced technology for long-term space habitats, including space architecture and infrastructure for space tourists. In addition to TESSERAE technology, Ekblaw's projects have included designs for waste management and HVAC systems in space. ==Publications==

Ekblaw wrote the 2021 book Into the Anthropocosmos: A Whole Space Catalog from the MIT Space Exploration Initiative. • Ekblaw, A., Prosina, A., Newman, D.J., and Paradiso, J., "Space Habitat Reconfigurability: TESSERAE platform for self-aware assembly", 30th IAA Symposium On Space and Society (Space Architecture: Habitats, Habitability, and Bases). Proceedings of the IAF International Astronautical Congress, 2019. • A Azaria, A Ekblaw, T Vieira, A Lippman, "Medrec: Using blockchain for medical data access and permission management", 2016 2nd international conference on open and big data (OBD), 25-30. ==References==