People

Principal investigator

Chuchu Fan

T. Wilson (1953) Professor in Aeronautics, Assistant Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics

Research scientists

Jim Neidhoefer

jimneid@mit.edu

Postdoctoral researchers

Jake Arkin

Email: jarkin@mit.edu

Yingke Li

yingkeli@mit.edu

Fei Chen

feic@mit.edu

Huao Li

huaol@mit.edu

Augustinos Saravanos

asaravan@mit.edu

Graduate students

Yue Meng

Email: mengyue@mit.edu

Songyuan Zhang

Email: szhang21@mit.edu

Oswin So

Email: oswinso@mit.edu

Yongchao Chen

Email: ycchen98@mit.edu

Mingxin Yu

Email: yumx35@mit.edu

Ruixiao Yang

Email: ruixiao@mit.edu

Anjali Parashar

Email: anjalip@mit.edu

Yilun Hao

yilunhao@mit.edu

Allen Wang

allenw@mit.edu (Co-adviced by Dr.Cristina Rea)

Eric Yu

eyyu@mit.edu

Jaeyoun Choi

cjy0051@mit.edu

Carson Sobolewski

csobo@mit.edu

Visiting students

William Sharpless

Email: wsharpless@ucsd.edu

Alumni

NameLast role at REALMNext position
Matti VahsVisiting PhD student, 2025PhD student at KTH Royal Institute of Technology
Niklas SchmidVisiting PhD student, 2025PhD student at ETH Zürich
Vincent GradyVisiting MS student, 2025MS student at Georgia Tech
Ronald GarciaVisiting MS student, 2025MS student at Johns Hopkins University
Laurin LudmannVisiting PhD student, 2025PhD student at University of Stuttgart
Ji YinVisiting PhD student, 2025Applied scientist at Symbotic
Weichao ZhouPostdoctoral researcher, 2025Applied scientist at Amazon
Kunal GargsPostdoctoral researcher, 2024Assistant professor at Arizona State University
Luzia KnoedlerVisiting PhD student, 2024PhD student at DUT
Charles DawsonPhD student, 2024DOE Energy Innovator Fellow
Kwesi RutledgePostdoctoral researcher, 2023Robotics Controls Engineer at Aescape
Laura LützowVisiting MS student, 2022PhD student at TUM
Chenning YuVisiting MS student, 2022PhD student at UC San Diego
Rujul GandhiMEng student, 2021Associate Specialist at UC San Francisco

Undergraduate researchers

  • Dylan Goff, MIT AeroAstro ’22
  • Bethany Lowenkamp, MIT MechE ’22
  • Frank Gonzalez, MIT AeroAstro ’23
  • Matthew Habtezgi, MIT EECS ’25
  • Anh Dinh, MIT EECS ’23
  • Yonatan Delelegn, MIT AeroAstro ’23
  • Mukun Tong, Tsinghua University ’23
  • Adrian Gutierrez, MIT AeroAstro ’24
  • Benjamin Rich, MIT AeroAstro ’24
  • Billal Iqbal, MIT MechE and EECS ’23
  • Jenny Baek, MIT EECS ’25
  • Suchitha Channapatna, MIT AeroAstro ’26
  • Sera Hamilton, MIT AeroAstro ’26
  • Kai Xi, MIT AeroAstro ’25
  • Joseph Zhang, MIT EECS ’25
  • Madeline Bumpus, Howard University
  • Miranda Zhao
  • Ojas Gulati
  • Anand John

High school researchers

  • Adithya Sastry (RSI program, 2025)
  • Cooper Taylor (RSI program, 2025)
  • Giol Vinyals i Roca
  • Yutong (Linda) Zhou