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Event

Beyond the Cradle 2024

People
Groups
Thursday
April 4, 2024
MIT Media Lab, E14 - 6th Floor
75 Amherst Street, Cambridge, MA

Beyond the Cradle
Thursday, April 4, 2024
In-person with livestream

Email beyondthecradle@media.mit.edu for a link to register to join us in-person.

This event will be livestreamed starting at 8:45am ET on Thursday April 4. 

 This year at our eighth annual Beyond the Cradle event, co-presented by Aurelia Institute and the MIT Media Lab's Space Exploration Initiative (SEI), our theme as we emerge from a remarkable year of advancements made in space exploration will focus on The Eclipse: Aligning Earth and Space. 

Mark your calendars and join us virtually or in-person as we investigate and design new dimensions to interplanetary life with experts from the space industry, scientists, designers, engineers, artists, authors, and more. 

Beyond the Cradle 2024 will be a day-long event with multiple networking breaks, plenary talks and panel discussions, breakout sessions, and workshops. 

Keep your eye on our Program as we update with Panels, Speakers, and Workshops!

SPEAKER BIOS

PROGRAM SCHEDULE: 

8:00 AM     Breakfast and registration

8:45 AM     We are go for launch | Ariel Ekblaw and Cody Paige

9:00 AM     Keynote 

Dr. Sara Seager, Professor of Physics, Professor of Planetary Science, and a Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, astrophysicist

9:40 AM     Our Sci-Fi Space Future panel

Samantha Harvey, novelist 

Jason Ning, TV producer and screen writer of shows such as The Expanse

Moderated by Rick Loverd, Director of The Science & Entertainment Exchange, a program of the National Academy of Sciences

10:20 AM     Break

10:40 AM     Democratizing Access to Space panel

Dr. Darlene Lim, Research Scientist at the NASA Ames Research Center, Deputy Project Scientist for the NASA VIPER Lunar Rover Mission

Dr. Gordon “Oz” Osinski, Professor, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Western Ontario, Geologist on NASA's Artemis III mission

Dr. Christianna Taylor, Chief Product Officer, G-Space

Maggie Coblentz, fieldwork producer

Moderated by Dr. Cody Paige, Director, MIT Space Exploration Initiative

11:20 AM     Space Architecture panel

Georgi Petrov, Senior Associate Principal, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill

Brent Sherwood, space architect, and consultant

Gui Trotti, President, Trotti & Associates, Inc

Melodie Yashar, VP, Building Design and Performance, ICON

Moderated by Dr. Ariel Ekblaw, CEO, Aurelia Institute, Founder,  MIT Space Exploration Initiative

12:00 PM     Lunch

1:00 PM  Future Worlds fireside chat

Dr. Thomas Zurbuchen, Professor and leader, Space Programs at ETH Zurich, formerly NASA’s Associate Administrator for the Science Mission Directorate

Dr. Erika Wagner, Senior Director of Emerging Market Development, Blue Origin

Marc Weiser, Founder and Managing Director, RPM Ventures

Sita Sonty, CEO, Space Tango

Moderated by Dr. Dava Newman, Director of the MIT Media Lab and Apollo Professor of Astronautics

(in Lecture Hall) SEI Alum & Student Talks

Phillip Cherner, MIT Media Lab 

Sana Sharma, Co-Founder and Chief Design Officer, Aurelia Institute

Irmandy Wicaksono, Responsive Environments, MIT Media Lab 

Larissa Zhou, food scientist and engineer

Don Derek Haddad, NASA Ames Research

1:40 PM     Space and the Arts panel

Lita Albuquerque,  Artist

Julius von Bismarck, Artist

Sydney Skybetter, Choreographer, Deputy Dean and Professor, College for Curriculum, Brown University

Moderated by Xin Liu, Artist and Engineer

(in Lecture Hall) Space Start-Up Talks

Imelda Alexopoulos, Director of Exploration Strategy, Fleet Space Technologies

Scarlett Elizabeth Koller, Co-founder and CEO, Mithril Technologies

Jordan Wachs, Director of Business Development, SpaceRake

Nicole Wagner, President and CEO, Lambda Vision

Van Wagner, Project Manager, Lunar Outpost

2:20 AM     Break

2:30 PM     Breakout Workshops

(in E14-240) Out of this World STEAM Engagement

(in E14-244) Designing the MIT Lunar Mission Control 

(in E14-514b) Ethics of AI & Space Exploration

4:15 PM     Explorer Fireside Chat

Dr. Katy Croff Bell, Founder and President of the Ocean Discovery League and National Geographic Explorer and Fellow

John Shoffner, Private Astronaut, Axiom Mission 2

Moderated by Dr. Aleksandra Stankovic, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard, Director of the Human Performance Lab and Executive Director of the Center for Space Medicine Research at Massachusetts General Hospital

5:00 PM     Closing remarks

5:30 PM    Reception 

Please contact beyondthecradle@media.mit.edu if you have questions, or are interested in attending but have not received an in-person invitation.

Check out our 2023 event here.

Past years Beyond the Cradle archive here.

Follow @Aurelia_Labs,  @ExploreSpace_ML, @ariel_ekblaw, and @medialab on Twitter for photos and quotes from the day! #BeyondTheCradle #SpaceExploration

Workshops

Designing the MIT Lunar Mission Control
Out of this World STEAM Engagement
Ethics of AI + Space Exploration

Designing the MIT Lunar Mission Control
Hosted by Comcast and facilitated by Dr. Don Derek Haddad and Phillip Cherner

The Space Exploration Initiative is sending three payloads to the Lunar south pole within a year. We will be taking the first 3D images from the Lunar surface, sending the AstroAnt, a miniature robot to monitor the Lunar Outpost rover, and flying a record of voices from all over the world in the HUMANS project. For this workshop, hosted by Comcast, we invite you to join us to design the future Lunar Mission Control at MIT. Work with artists, designers, engineers and scientists from MIT and industry to help us envision a multi-media Mission Control room, engagement opportunities and how to bring the world with us to the Moon. Through brainstorming sessions, guided discussions and virtual reality demonstrations, you will help us to design the platforms we will use to communicate with our Lunar payloads, and decide what modes of visualization will be most impactful for the data we collect on the Lunar surface. Please join us and Comcast in being a part of MIT’s return to the Moon.

Out of this World STEAM Engagement
Hosted by the Perseid Foundation and facilitated by Dr. Rachel Connolly

Emerging platforms and space mission assets, along with initiatives like NASA's Open Science Initiative and Science Activation Program, are providing innovative and exciting opportunities for learners to actively engage in real-world and personally meaningful projects. In this participatory workshop, connect with others interested in Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math (STEAM) education to learn about innovative projects and programs, and brainstorm some new ones together.

The host of the event, John Shoffner’s Perseid Foundation, is dedicated to improving education in underserved schools of Appalachia with programs for student growth and STEAM curriculum development. Globally, they host programs that connect students to space and promote the “A” in STEAM.

Leave with new contacts, resources, and ideas for engaging your own learner audiences moving forward!

Ethics of AI + Space Exploration
Hosted by Aurelia Institute and facilitated by Dr. Albert R. Antosca and Dr. Partick Lin

The Role of AI in Our Sci-fi Space Future: Exploring the Ethical Landscape

Join us for a workshop on the ethics of emerging technology at the intersection of artificial intelligence and space. Our session aims to provoke thoughtful discussions on how rapidly developing AI technologies can be responsibly designed and ethically implemented in the context of human space exploration. Through guided discussions, we’ll unpack topics ranging from issues of AI autonomy and human control, to astronaut privacy, the social implications of AI on longer-duration missions, value alignment and safety, and beyond. The aim of this workshop is to sketch the ethical landscape of emerging issues in AI and humans living in space, toward the ultimate goal of developing a roadmap for a short course on the ethics of space technology. We welcome your insights and discussion contributing to a deeper understanding of what it means to ethically navigate our sci-fi space future.

Aurelia Institute is a non-profit space architecture R&D lab, education and outreach center, and policy hub dedicated to building humanity’s future in space, with cross-over technologies for extreme environments on Earth. This new focused research organization was spun out of Dr. Ariel Ekblaw's lab at the MIT Space Exploration Initiative.

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