Ariel Ekblaw

About

Ariel Caitlyn Ekblaw is an American aerospace architect and astronautical engineer who designs space architecture. She founded the Space Exploration Initiative at MIT Media Lab in 2016 and has served as its director since 2020. Ekblaw is CEO and co-founder of the space habitat-oriented firm Aurelia Institute, which started in 2021. She earned her PhD from MIT, with her doctoral thesis describing a modular, self-assembling space architecture design called TESSERAE.