Josh Rountree, a PhD student in AeroAstro’s Interactive Robotics group, was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel, USAF, in a ceremony in the Neumann Hangar on January 30, 2026.
Lt Col Rountree has been an officer in the US Air Force for over fourteen years. During that time he’s flown missions, led operations and flight testing, and has emerged as a leader in integrating the newest technologies that the Air Force is testing for the field. That experience led his commanding officers to encourage him to apply for the PhD program in AeroAstro to further advance his expertise and ability to lead innovation in the field.
Rountree is about halfway through a PhD program in Course 16 through the Air Force. Active-duty military Officers in the doctoral program are typically required to complete their coursework, qualifying process, and doctoral thesis on an accelerated timeline of three years. It’s an intensive workload that’s given him a new perspective on his career as well as on the famous rigor of MIT’s graduate program.
“Since I didn’t come to MIT for my Masters or anything previously, I have to do the whole shebang,” says Lt Col Rountree. “My brain is getting re-wired by this place. I’ve come to understand better why MIT holds their own programs and coursework to such a high degree of rigor. Colleagues of mine at other schools are able to knock out their coursework in a couple semesters — that’s just out of the question here.”
He was advanced enough in his career that he needed a waiver from the Air Force to apply for the program — “I’m older than the usual grad student, well past the usual ten-year window.” But his experience gives him a unique lens on the importance of the research he’s undertaking.
“When I bring that context here to MIT, it’s about more than just knocking out that massive load of coursework and getting the thesis done. It’s about, does this matter? Is this the right question, is it going to help the folks who are flying jets right now, make their pain points better?”
When his promotion to Lieutenant Colonel came through, his deepened appreciation of how the doctoral program and his military career intersect led him to the decision to have his promotion ceremony on campus, at the Gerhard Neumann Hangar.
“Having the ceremony on campus [instead of at a military base] gives it a very different flavor,” he explains. “It very much humanizes the person in the uniform. This is the first truly formal promotion ceremony I’ve done, but especially with having the majority of the people we invited be unfamiliar with the military, it was great to get to share that slice of my life with them. It made it uniquely special.”
Colonel Tucker Hamilton, retired from the Air Force and a longtime mentor of Rountree’s, performed the ceremony. Other attendees included the Director of AI Accelerator, Scott Ruppel, and a handful of other military students at MIT, as well as his advisor Prof. Julie Shah and civilian friends and family.
For Lt Col Rountree, the most meaningful part of the promotion ceremony was participating in a longstanding military tradition where family members pin the new rank insignia on the honoree’s uniform — a task carried out in this case by Rountree’s two young children. “The reason is to recognize and signify that the family is a key part of all of this,” he explains.
