- Space Exploration Initiative
Dr. Cody Paige is the Director of the Space Exploration Initiative at the Media Lab, a team of 50+ students, faculty and staff building and flying advanced technology for space exploration. The Initiative focuses on helping students take their research into space. The pipeline developed to achieve this works with students from across the Media Lab and the MIT community to prototype space-related research in the lab, fly and test them in microgravity on parabolic and suborbital flights, and finally to take them to the International Space Station or on to the Moon. Cody fosters relationships between the Initiative, MIT, and space industry partners to forge a path for students to achieve spaceflight for their research. The interdisciplinary projects combine science, engineering, art and design, all focusing on developing the artifacts for life in space.
Cody came to MIT as a Fulbright Scholar and completed her Ph.D. in Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT. Her research focused on enabling a permanent human presence on the Moon through the development of wearable radiation shielding material and a virtual reality platform for geological surface exploration of the Moon and Mars. During her Ph.D., she prepared a commercial off the shelf RGB and depth camera as a Lunar payload for the SEI To the Moon to Stay Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) mission in collaboration with NASA Ames and Lunar Outpost, slated to launch in 2024. She tested the camera in Lunar gravity on the SEI 2022 Parabolic Flight as well as doing field work on the SEI Svalbard Field Expedition to assess the Lunar mission concept of operations . Cody also has a background in geology, specifically quaternary geochronology, and completed her Master of Applied Science at the University of Toronto in Aerospace Engineering and her Bachelor of Applied Science from Queen’s University in Engineering Physics. She is passionate about student outreach, in particular encouraging girls, and young women in STEAMD (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, Math and Design). She started the MIT Zero-G Outreach Initiative, a program mentoring middle school students in the Cambridge area to develop experiments for microgravity. Cody is also a pilot, an avid hiker and rock climber.