MIT Aeronautics and
Astronautics Department
enews Vol 4, #5
April 2008
In this issue:
- Radivitzky Named ISN Associate Director
- Widnall to Receive Honorary Degrees
- Brunelle-Yeung, Sequiera Win Paper Competition
- Aero-Astro Ties for First in US-Asian Vehicle Competition
- AA Team Places Second in Lunar Ventures
- Cummings Promoted to Associate Professor
- P. Young to Direct Space Knowledge Center
- Ramnath Will Deliver Conference Plenary Lecture
- Program Celebrates Daedalus at 20
- ACL Featured in Mag Articles
1. RADOVITZKY NAMED ISN ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR
Professor Raul Radovitzky has been appointed as the MIT Institute
for Soldier Nanotechnologies Associate Director. ISN Executive
Director WIlliam Peters wrote, "The ISN is very pleased that
Raul has accepted this new responsibility and thanks him for his
many contributions to ISN research including the training of graduate
students and post-doctoral associates." Radovitzky is an internationally
recognized authority on multiscale modeling and large-scale simulation
of the response of materials to extreme loading conditions, such
as those produced by blast. His research has contributed new modeling
tools used by government and industry scientists for analysis of
blast phenomena, as well as fundamental strategies for the design
of light weight materials to protect the human body, vehicles and
other platforms from blast forces.
2. WIDNALL TO RECEIVE HONORARY DEGREES
MIT Institute Professor and Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics
Professor Sheila Widnall will receive three honorary degrees this
spring. Between May and June, the University of Oxford in England,
Claremont Graduate University in California, and Northwestern University
in Illinois will present her with Honorary Doctor of Science degrees.
Widnall (B.Sc. '60, M.S. '61, Ph.D. '64) was MIT's first woman professor
of engineering. Between 1993 and 1997, she was Secretary of the U.S.
Air Force.
3. BRUNELLE-YEUNG, SEQUEIRA WIN PAPER COMPETITION
Aero-Astro graduate students Elza Brunelle-Yeung and Chris Sequeira
are the first and second place winners, respectively, in the Partnership
for AiR Transportation Noise and Emissions Reduction's 2008 Joseph
A. Hartman Student Paper Competition. Brunelle's paper was titled "Impact
of Subsonic Aviation on Nonmelanoma Skin Cancer Incidence Due to
Atmospheric Ozone Variation." Sequeira wrote "Relationships
Between Emissions-Related Aviation Regulations and Human Health." The
competition seeks to capture the best technical solutions, economic
analyses, methodologies, and processes that work towards reducing
aviation noise and emissions exposure through source reduction technologies,
noise abatement operating procedures, compatible land use management,
and airport operational control measures. PARTNER is
a cooperative aviation research organization headquartered in Aero-Astro.
4. AERO-ASTRO TIES FOR FIRST IN US-ASIAN
VEHICLE COMPETITION
An MIT team, under the leadership of Aeronautics and Astronautics
Professor Nick Roy, tied for first place in the in the First US-Asian
Demonstration and Assessment of Micro-aerial and Unmanned Ground
Vehicle Technology Conference, held March 10-15 in Agra, India. The
MIT team was also awarded Best Rotorcraft, and was recognized for
special achievement by the US Army Aviation and Missile Research,
Development, and Engineering Center. MIT team members were Aero-Astro
graduate student Ruijie He, EECS graduate student Abraham Bachrach,
and project scientist Sam Prentice. All team members are also part
of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. The
demonstration involved a competition among 12 teams in a hostage
rescue scenario. The objective of the competition was to deploy a
micro air vehicle (smaller than 30 cm) over a distance of 1 km, identify
the presence of hostages, and coordinate with ground vehicles in
recovering the hostages. MIT's entry, developed in collaboration
with Ascending Technologies GmbH in Germany, used a six-rotor 30cm
helicopter to demonstrate autonomous navigation, intelligent machine
planning and adaptive image processing at various stages of the mission.
The team was awarded 1st place in a tie with University of Arizona
and ENAC/Martin-Mueller Engineering.
5. AA STUDENTS PLACE SECOND IN LUNAR VENTURES
COMPETITION
A team comprising Aero-Astro graduate students Alexander Bruccoleri,
Stephen Gildea, and Gregor Hanuschak, and Sloan student Adam Siegel
placed second at the national Lunar Ventures business plan competition.
The team, Pyramid Sciences, planned to commercialize technology from
the Space Propulsion Lab, including Electrospray thrusters, ion beams
and the Near Vacuum Hall Thruster. The contest ran all year with
initial rounds of executive summaries. The top six teams were invited
to present at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden Colorado. The
technology from the SPL was well received by the judges for its promise
in space and in the semiconductor industry.
6. CUMMINGS PROMOTED TO ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR
Professor Mary L. (Missy) Cummings has been promoted to the rank
of associate professor effective July 1, 2008. Cummings is an expert
in the field of human supervisory control. Announcing the promotion,
Aero-Astro Department head Ian Waitz said, "(Cummings) has made
significant contributions in decision support design and human-system
performance evaluation, especially with regards to human interaction
with autonomous vehicle systems and human-computer interaction. Please
join me in congratulating Professor Cummings on this promotion." Professor
Cummings is the Humans and Automation Lab director, a member of CSAIL,
and holds a joint appointment with the MIT Engineering Systems Division.
A naval officer and military pilot from 1988-1999, she was one of
the Navy's first female fighter pilots.
7. P. YOUNG TO DIRECT SPACE KNOWLEDGE CENTER
Former Aero-Astro Senior Lecturer Col. Pete Young has been appointed
by the Director of the Department of Defense's Missile Defense Agency
as director of the MDA's new Space Knowledge Center in Los Angeles.
The center's primary responsibility is to advise MDA directors of
potential technical risks to their programs, and to identify associated
mitigations.
8. RAMNATH WILL DELIVER CONFERENCE PLENARY
LECTURE
Senior Lecturer Dr. Rudrapatna V. Ramnath has been invited to deliver
the Plenary Lecture and to serve as a member of the Scientific Committee
at the Second International Conference on Advanced Computational
Engineering and Experimenting in Barcelona, 14-15 July, 2008. Ramnath
will also serve on the Scientific Committee for the Fourth International
Conference on Diffusion in Solids and Liquids in Barcelona, 9-11
July, 2008.
9. PROGRAM CELEBRATES DAEDALUS AT 20
On April 23, 1988, Daedalus, the human-powered aircraft designed
by Aero-Astro Professor Mark Drela and built by MIT students and
faculty, flew 74 miles (119 km) from Iraklion Air Force Base on Crete,
Greece, to the island of Santorini in 3 hours, 54 minutes. Despite
the fact that the aircraft crashed short of its goal, the flight
holds official Fédération Aéronautique Internationale
world records for distance and duration for human powered airplanes.
Twenty years later, this record still stands. On Friday, April 18,
2008, MIT Aero-Astro celebrates the 20th anniversary of the Daedalus
flight with "Myth to Reality: The Daedalus Project with Juan
R. Cruz." The presentation will summarize the design, construction,
flight testing, and record flight. Cruz holds a Ph.D. from Virginia
Tech, and an S.B. from MIT, both in aerospace engineering. During
his years at MIT he was involved with the Monarch and Daedalus human
powered airplane teams. Today, he is a senior aerospace engineer
in the Exploration Systems Engineering Branch at the NASA
Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. He was a member
of the Mars Exploration Rover project that placed two rovers on the
surface of Mars in 2004. April 23, noon, room 33-116.
10. ACL FEATURED IN MAG ARTICLES
An article by Professor John How, students Brett Bethke and Adrian
Frank, Boeing Technical Fellow John Vian, and former student Daniel
Dale is featured on the cover of the April issue of IEEE
Control Systems Magazine. "Rapid Prototyping for Multivehicle
Flight Control" describes an indoor testbed developed at MIT
for studying long duration multivehicle missions in a controlled
environment. How's Aerospace Controls Lab was also the topic of a
recent article "Crash-Proof UAVs Fly Blind at MIT's High-Tech
Aerodrome" published by Popular
Mechanics.
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!
