Katya Arquilla

Katya Arquilla joined MIT’s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AeroAstro) as an assistant professor in June 2022. She serves as the Boeing Career Development Professor in Aeronautics and Astronautics. In her research, she monitors humans to quantify and augment their health and performance in extreme operational environments. She specializes in bioastronautics, psychophysiological monitoring, wearable sensor systems, and human-computer interaction. Previously, she was a postdoc working with Professor Julie Shah in the Interactive Robotics Group in AeroAstro. There, she worked on integrating psychophysiological monitoring — connecting physiological signals to psychological state — into human-robot interactions as a measure of psychological safety and trust. Arquilla earned a BS in astrophysics at Rice University and an MS and PhD in aerospace engineering from the University of Colorado at Boulder. Before her graduate studies, she taught math and physics to middle and high school students at YES Prep Public Schools, a charter school for students in Houston’s underserved communities.