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Partnership for Air Transportation Noise & Emission Reduction
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PARTNER presents Center of Excellence Faculty and Student, and Hartman Paper Contest awards

APRIL 2011 — At its April Advisory Board meeting in Washington, DC, the Partnership for AiR Transportation Noise and Emissions Reduction presented affiliated individuals with the FAA's Center of Excellence Faculty and Student of the Year awards, and with PARTNER's Hartman Student Paper Contest Award.

Faculty of the Year

Philippe Bonnefoy, formerly of MIT, and Michelle Kirby of the Georgia Institute of Technology received the Faculty of the Year Award. Both were instrumental in research accomplished under PARTNER Project 30, Metrics for an Aviation CO2 standard. Project 30 supports the FAA’s high-level objective: to improve air transportation’s environmental performance.

In presenting the award, PARTNER Director Ian Waitz said, "Philippe and Michelle’s expertise and diligent research make possible identification of robust metrics to accurately and objectively evaluate emissions for aircraft certification and fleet performance monitoring. Their work greatly reduces the risk of adoption of metrics that cause consequences inconsistent with the environmental goals."

Award winners and PARTNER sponsor representatives at the April Advisory Board Meeting (from left) Carl Burleson, FAA; Julie Oettinger, FAA; Philippe Bonnefoy; Russ Stratton; Michelle Kirby; Harshad Khalikar; Chelsea He; Kieran Poulain; Mohan Gupta, FAA; Ian Waitz; Lourdes Maurice, FAA; Ted McDonald, Transport Canada; Alec Simpson, Transport Canada. (William Litant/MIT photo)

PARTNER 2011 Award winners

Student of the Year

The Center of Excellence Student of the Year Award was presented to Kieran Poulain of the Pennsylvania State University and to Chelsea He of MIT. Poulain was cited for his contributions to Penn State’s efforts to predict en-route noise from aircraft, and to better assess the capabilities of existing FAA tools for en-route noise. The work was conducted as part of PARTNER's Project 2: Source Emission and Propagation.

Chelsea He received her award in recognition of her work in improving noise modeling under PARTNER Project 3: Valuation and Trade-offs of Policy Options. Her work has since been used by the FAA and the International Civil Aviation Organization to inform policy decisions.

Hartman Competition

Open to university students worldwide, the Hartman Competition captures the best solutions, analyses, methodologies, and processes aimed at reducing aviation noise and emissions exposure.

The Hartman Competition First Place was presented to Alexander Naiman, a Ph.D. candidate in the Stanford Aeronautics and Astronautics Department. His paper is titled "“Simulation of Persistent Aircraft Contrails for Assessment of Climate Impact.” Naiman received a check for $3,400.

There was a three-way tie for second place. Winners are Russ Stratton, an MIT AeroAstro PhD student, who wrote "Impact of Non-CO2 Combustion Effects from Aviation on the Environmental Feasibility of Alternative Jet Fuels," Harshad Khalikar, a grad student in AeroAstro grad student who wrote "Estimation of Aircraft Taxi-out Fuel Burn using Flight Data Recorder Archives," and Steven Isley of Georgia Tech, whose paper is "A Comparison of Aircraft Retirement and Fuel Efficiency Policy Instruments: A Modified Fleet and Operations Module Approach." Each second place winner received a check for $1,600.

The Hartman Paper Competition is named in memory of Professor Joseph A. Hartman of Boise University, a founding PARTNER member and principal investigator, who passed away in 2004. 

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