Zac Manchester

Boeing Career Development Professor in Aeronautics and Astronautics
Director, REx Lab
Zac Manchester

Contact Info

Email

zacm@mit.edu

Administrative Assistant

Douglas Purdy
dgpurdy@mit.edu
617.258.6796

Financial Contact

Venecia Siders
venecia@mit.edu
617.715.5258
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Affiliated Labs

I love pushing the performance limits of autonomous systems. I love optimization because it is the mathematical language that most directly lets us do this, and I especially love putting things in space.

Specialization and Research Interests

I’m interested in building autonomous systems that match and, eventually, surpass the levels of performance, agility, and reliability of humans. My lab’s work has spanned underwater, ground, aerial, space, and quantum domains. I especially like to combine clever algorithms with embedded computation and low-cost hardware to enable new capabilities on small resource-constrained platforms like CubeSats.

Teaching Interests

Numerical optimization, dynamics, control, state estimation, and space systems.

Degrees

Ph.D. Aerospace Engineering, Cornell, 2015
M.Eng. Mechanical Engineering, Cornell, 2010
B.S. Applied Physics, Cornell, 2009

Positions held at MIT

Associate Professor, Aeronautics and Astronautics

Positions held outside of MIT

Associate Professor, Robotics, Carnegie Mellon University (2025)
Assistant Professor, Robotics, Carnegie Mellon University (2020-2024)
Assistant Professor, Aeronautics and Astronautics, Stanford University (2018-2020)

Awards & Honors

  • NASA Group Achievement Award, 2025
  • NSF CAREER, 2025
  • NIAC Fellow, 2021
  • NASA Early Career Faculty Award, 2018