Mollie Johnson leads second iteration of Aeroverse: Aerospace Engineering in Extended Reality course for IAP 2025

Graduate student Mollie Johnson (Engineering Systems Lab) continues to use extended reality to help students picture themselves launching rockets, flying planes, and exploring Mars – all from the comfort of campus, and the new XR room in 37-384. Johnson served as TA for the course for the second year in a row, with nine students participating and two winning Meta Quest 3 headsets.

Johnson spoke about the course as a panelist at the EXPERIENTIAL Conference hosted by MIT Reality Hack in January. She joined the “From Cockpits to the Cosmos: How Extended Reality Is Shaping Aerospace Innovations” and “The Power of Play: Experiential Technology as a Catalyst for Learning and Co-Creation” panels, exploring research in extended reality for use in aerospace education.

Throughout her time at MIT, Johnson has been developing simulations for classwork and competition since joining the department in 2023. She and teammates recently entered as a team in the 2025 Reality Hack AR/VR hackathon hosted at MIT. The team won third place in the “Aerospatial” track, where they developed a two-player lunar lander simulator game called “Apollo 18.”