ASU brings students into the room where aerospace’s future is being built
A week before ASU helped convene leaders around the future of space, ASU Learning Transformation Studios gathered a different kind of room in Los Angeles.
At LULU inside the Hammer Museum, Studios brought Angus Fletcher, Alice Waters and leaders across education, philanthropy, the arts, civic life and economic development together to talk about human intelligence, story and what learning needs now. The question at the heart of the lunch was simple: in a time shaped by artificial intelligence, social pressure and institutional strain, how do we help young people imagine and build what comes next?
One week later, that same question showed up in another form. On May 15th, LA Times Studios and Arizona State University co-hosted the 2026 Aerospace & Defense Summit at NantStudios in El Segundo. Led by Kevin McGinnis, ASU's Vice President for Strategic technology Initiatives, the event brought together leaders across space, defense, government, media, research, investment and education to focus on the future of secure, high-performance connectivity.
With voices from NASA, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation, CBS News, United States Innovative Technology, ImmunityBio, and ASU — including President Michael M. Crow, ASU Executive Vice President and Professor Sally Morton, and ASU Professor for Space Futures Laurie Leshin, former director of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory — the summit connected the hard science of space with the workforce and learning systems needed to carry it forward.
The workforce question ran through the day. Morton moderated a panel with Anna Sophia Kulenguski, a Planetary Sciences PhD candidate in ASU’s School of Earth and Space Exploration, and Dr. Elena Rocchi, a clinical professor at the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts, and director of the Master of Science in Design, Space Architecture and Extreme Environments program. Together, they brought the conversation back to the people who will carry the field forward: how students discover aerospace, how they imagine themselves in it and how universities help turn that first spark into real pathways.
That is where ASU Learning Transformation Studios’ work in Los Angeles matters. Studios helps ASU build partnerships that link education, research, industry and students to the futures already taking shape here.
Because the future of aerospace will not be built by technology alone.
Asked by the moderator how the current momentum in space — the investment, public attention and visibility around missions like Artemis — was resonating in his work, Richard Cook, associate lab director for strategic integration and director for strategy and formulation at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, brought the conversation back to people.
“The thing that’s going to make us able to do all the things we’re talking about here is our ability as a nation … to have the people resources necessary,” Cook said.
He pointed to Artemis splashdown broadcasts on baseball stadium screens as the kind of public moment that can inspire young people to pursue space. Those students, he said, may come from “ASU or Caltech or wherever,” then go on to work for new space companies, NASA, or other organizations “because, in the end, space is a people business.”
Rocchi made the same point near the close of the workforce conversation. Space may depend on advanced technology, capital, and policy, but all of that work ultimately flows through people. “Investing in that pipeline isn’t a soft priority,” she said. “It’s a strategic one.”
That is the bridge between the May 8 luncheon and the Aerospace & Defense Summit. Fletcher’s work asked leaders to think beyond what is probable and toward what is possible. At the summit, that same idea moved through space communications, defense readiness and commercial space. The field needs engineering, capital and policy. It also needs imagination, story and students who can see themselves in work that still feels distant.
At the summit, ASU kept the hard science and the human pipeline in the same frame. Space communications, advanced materials, commercial space, defense readiness and orbital infrastructure all matter. So do the students who need to see themselves in that future early enough to choose it.
Studios helped make that visible by bringing students to the summit.
Six students from Inglewood Unified School District attended with their teacher and spoke with President Crow and Alan Arkatov, senior advisor to President Crow and executive director of ASU Learning Transformation Studios. Students from Los Angeles County Office of Education Superintendent Dr. Debra Duardo’s Student Advisory Council also attended, including students from La Mirada High School in Norwalk-La Mirada Unified School District, Palos Verdes Peninsula High School in Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified School District and San Gabriel High School in Alhambra Unified School District.
For the students, the summit helped connect their passion for science and aerospace with a potential future in the field.
One wrote afterward that it was their “first time being fully exposed to the aerospace industry” and their first time attending a live discussion panel. They called the experience “eye opening, mostly interactive and quite informative” and said it gave them a stronger reason to keep exploring the field as they prepare to study mechanical engineering.
Another student described the experience as “truly inspiring,” pointing to ASU’s Dreamscape Learn virtual reality experience and saying the day “motivated me to continue exploring careers in business, technology, and innovation.”
The students’ reflections represent ASU’s Charter in motion. ASU measures itself not by whom it excludes, but by whom it includes and how they succeed; it advances research and discovery of public value; and it assumes responsibility for the communities it serves.
It also reflects the case that President Crow has made about the role of research universities now: technical innovation is not enough if universities do not also deliver social value, mobility and service to the communities around them.
This is the investment ASU is making in Los Angeles — not only in events, but in relationships, learning pathways, and cross-sector partnerships that help young people find their way into the fields shaping the future.
The May 8 luncheon and the Aerospace & Defense Summit were different settings. One centered food, story, art, and human intelligence. The other focused on space communications, national security, aerospace innovation, and workforce. Together, however, they point to the same work.
ASU is in Los Angeles to partner with people building the future of learning, work, and public life. Studios helps make those connections sharper: across disciplines, across sectors, and across the distance between a high school student’s first spark of interest and a field that needs their talent.
This is exactly why convening matters. Not because people gathered, but because the right people met to imagine and design a collective future together.