Dr. Ariel Ekblaw is the founder and CEO of Aurelia Institute and General Partner of the Aurelia Foundry Fund, where she is advancing the future of human space exploration. Through space architecture research and development, education and outreach, and strategic investment in early-stage space startups, she is building an ecosystem to expand humanity’s presence in low Earth orbit and beyond while democratizing access to space.

Previously, Ariel was the founding Director of the MIT Space Exploration Initiative, leading a multidisciplinary team of more than 50 students, faculty, and staff in designing, building, and flying advanced space technologies. She holds a B.S. in Physics, Mathematics, and Philosophy from Yale University and earned her PhD at MIT, where she designed a novel architecture for autonomously self-assembling space habitats. Her pioneering “TESSERAE” research and the laboratories she leads focus on next-generation space stations and habitats for Earth orbit, the Moon, and Mars.

Ariel is the author and editor of Into the Anthropocosmos: A Whole Space Catalog (MIT Press, 2021), served on the NASA Lunar Surface Innovation Consortium Executive Committee and the XPRIZE Global Visioneering Committee, and is a Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School Belfer Center and Tokyo’s Chiba Institute of Technology. Her work has been featured in a 2025 mainstage TED Talk and by WIRED, the Financial Times, Harvard Business Review, the Wall Street Journal, BBC, CNN, NPR, and leading science and technology podcasts.