MIT Aeronautics and
Astronautics Department
enews Vol 3, #11
July 2007
In this issue:
- Comings and Goings
- D-B-F, The Motion Picture
- Honors and Recognition
- Free MGH/BW Shuttle
1. COMINGS AND GOINGS
Col. Pete Young has relocated to Los Angeles where he's now working
for the Aerospace Corporation supporting Missile Defense Agency projects.
He tells us his primary responsibilities will be to provide support
in the areas of program management; satellite build, test, launch,
and operations; and systems engineering for upcoming MDA satellite
and target/interceptor missions. "My wife and I will always
remember and treasure memories of the many wonderful people we met
in the A-A department as well as at MIT; and will particularly remember
the many excellent people, both at MIT and elsewhere, who contributed
to the CDIO educational vision," Pete says.
By mid-August, Ray Sedwick will be on his way to the University
of Maryland at College Park where he'll be teaching Space Propulsion
in the Department of Aerospace Engineering.
Best wishes to Ray and Pete - they'll be missed.
2. D-B-F, THE MOTION PICTURE
As we noted in the last e-news, an Aero-Astro student team took
First Place in the 11th annual American Institute of Aeronautics
and Astronautics Design/Build/Fly competition, April 20th in Tucson,
AZ, A video of the team's flights and win is now posted on YouTube
at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0A0-MU61oJc Congratulations
again to George Kiwada G, Nii Armar G, Carl Engel '07, Adam Woodworth
'07, Brandon Suarez '09, Ryan Castonia '09, David Sanchez '09, and
Fuzhou Hu '09 for their fantastic performance. You can read more
about the competition and the MIT win at http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/aero-astro-comp.html .
3. HONORS AND RECOGNITION
Engineering post-doc Hiro Aoki is the winner of the Aerospace Medical
Association Space Medicine Branch's Young Investigator's Award as
the primary author of a paper presented at the 2007 ASMA meeting.
According to Dr. Chuck Oman, with whom Hiro is working, there were
177 people competing for the honor. Prof. Larry Young says, "This
is truly a major accomplishment for Hiro and we are very proud of
him. Hiro is a Japanese engineering post-doc working with Chuck on
visual orientation in space, and is a recipient of the highly competitive
National Space Biomedical Research Institute post-doctoral fellowship."
Prof. Dave Darmofal reports that two students from the Aerospace
Computational Design Laboratory received 1st and 2nd place in the
Student Paper Competition at the AIAA CFD Conference in June. Garrett
Barter's first-place paper was titled "Shock Capturing with
Higher-order, PDE-based Artificial Viscosity." Krzysztof Fidkowski
received second place with his paper "An Adaptive Simplex Cut-Cell
Method for Discontinuous Galerkin Discretizations of the Navier-Stokes
Equations." "Congratulations to both for outstanding papers
and presentations," Darmofal said.
Grad student Thaddeus Fulford-Jones has been named recipient of
the Hugh Hampton Young Fellowship. Aero-Astro Student Services Director
Barbara Lechner said, "the (fellowship) committee was clearly
very impressed with the work he is doing on the Mars Gravity biosatellite
program as well as the significance of his role in the project." Fulford-Jones
is the Payload Engineering Lead for the project. http://www.marsgravity.org/main/index.html Young
Fellowship recipients are selected for high integrity and moral character,
strong will and determination to accomplish, leadership skills, interests,
interdisciplinary training and development, and creativity in cross-disciplinary
concepts.
Aero-Astro Alumnus David Vos (Ph.D., Estimation and Control), founder,
CTO, and CEO of Athena Technologies, has received the Ernst & Young
Entrepreneur of the Year 2007 Award in the Services category. According
to Ernst & Young, the award recognizes outstanding entrepreneurs
who are building and leading dynamic, growing businesses. The award
was presented at an Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of The Year on
June 21. Athena Technologies is a leading provider of flight control
and navigation systems for UAVs and manned aircraft.
Col. Pete Young has provided us with an updated listing of this
year's AIAA honorees. The list includes:
Jessica Edmonds - John Leland Atwood winner
Martin Ouimet and Caroline Lamb - Graduate award winners
Phil Cunio - Abe Zarem winner, Astronautics; 3rd place Regional Student
Conference (grad)
RJ Hue and Sho Sato - 1st place, Regional StuConference (undergrad)
Ryan McLinko, Stephanie Couch, and Christopher Han - Undergrad scholarships,
juniors:
MIT Design-Build-Fly, 1st place national winners for 2007
Prof. Larry Young passes the word that NASA has welcomed a vote
of support for its future space exploration plans from the nation's
largest organization of doctors. The American Medical Association
has passed a resolution in support of human space travel, citing "potential
future benefits to medicine and advances in patient care." The
resolution passed in a unanimous vote at the AMA's annual meeting
of its House of Delegates, held recently in Chicago. The AMA also
reaffirmed support for medical research on the space shuttle and
International Space Station. NASA has posted a special Web area filled
with text, videos, images, and links all related to the return to
the Moon. Visit http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/exploration/main/index.html .
A very special congratulations to ALL Aero-Astro 2006-07 award winners.
From the Apollo Program Prize (to Bradley Holschuh '07) to the Yngve
Raustein Award (to Ryan Castonia '09), they're all listed at http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/awards-aeroastro-tt0606.html And,
a special congratulations to Student Services Coordinator Beth Marios
for receiving the the Aero-Astro Spirit of XVI Award "For exceptional
efforts and achievements that have furthered the mission and enhanced
the quality of life in the Aero-Astro department," and to the
recipients of the Vickie Kerrebrock Award, "for contribution
to the Course 16 spirit of community": Aero-Astro Administrative
Officer H. Lauren Gallant and the AIAA Student Section officers:
Ashley Cousineau, Darrell Cain, Rachel Ellman, Ruijie He, Valentina
Lugo, Ryan McLinko, Carolyn O'Brien, Viviana Serra, Pranay Sinha,
and Kathleen Voelbel.
4. FREE MGH/BW SHUTTLE
After learning that some Aero-Astro people traveling to Mass General
or Brigham and Women's hospitals are taking lengthy and circuitous
routes via T or taxi to get there, Carol Niemi suggests e-news readers
might appreciate learning that Partners HealthCare operates free
shuttle buses to both medical facilities, as well as other locations.
For schedules, visit http://www.partners.org/ourhosp/ourhosp_shuttle.html .
If you know of events, honors, activities, or other information
you'd like to see in the next issue of Aero-Astro enews, please send
to wlitant@mit.edu - we'd be
pleased to include it!
