MIT AeroAfro
A growing Black community that's out of this world!
A growing Black community that's out of this world!
AeroAfro is a department-recognized community of Black graduate students. The group aims to provide a network of students who can understand the particularities of being both a graduate student in Aeronautics and Astronautics and a member of the African Diasporic community. In particular, AeroAfro exists to provide a place where our shared heritage is celebrated, and a place where we can parse racially charged experiences in the department, at MIT, and in the greater aerospace industry. This mission is put into practice by facilitating communication between the Black graduate students and department faculty, by fostering connections with Aero/Astro alumni, and by having organic gatherings a few times per semester.
Mikayla Sharrieff, India Skinner and Bria Snell are three black female high-school seniors from the D.C. area, whose attempts to win a NASA science competition was disrupted by a group of racist and misogynistic trolls on 4chan (the full story is linked here). They travelled to MIT in August 2018 at the invitation of AeroAfro. While here, the girls received a tour of AeroAstro’s facilities, and met with two of MIT’s outstanding black faculty members: Prof. Wesley Harris of AeroAstro, and Prof. Danielle Wood of the Media Lab. They also participated in a college preparation workshop, and gave a presentation on their work to the MIT community. Finally, the girls participated in a hands-on water purification workshop with Dr. Susan Murcott, a water/wastewater engineer with decades of experience designing water systems across 25 countries. The girls gave a demonstration of their water purification system, and received instruction in other water purification methods used by Dr. Murcott and her team. (Their story appeared in MIT News here).
Reach us at aeroafro [at] mit [dot] edu .