Aero Student Awards & Accomplishments

Gomez and Tebbe Win 1st Place in AIAA Freshmen/Sophomore Division
Aerospace Sophomores José Gomez and Kevin Tebbe presented in the Freshman/Sophomore level project category at the AIAA conference at the Illinois Institute of Technology in April, 2013. Their 15 minute presentation explained their approach to engineering’s Blimp course project problem statement, and the final performance for their blimp. To two Sophomores received the Midwest Regional Student Conference, AIAA Foundation Student Competition Certificate of Merit for their presentation of a technical paper.

Duncan Miller awarded NSF and NDSEG Awards
Congratulations to senior aerospace student, Duncan Miller. Duncan was recently awarded a National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship and a prestigious National Defense Science & Engineering Graduate Fellowship. Duncan's principle undergrad faculty adviser has been Professor Jamie Cutler. Professor Ken Powell, Professor Aaron Ridley (AOSS), and Tim Smith have also provided great support.

"I am extremely honored, and owe everything to my mentors and friends who supported me along the way."
– Duncan Miller

Rackham Centennial Spring/Summer 2013 Fellowships

Khaled Aljanaideh receives a Rackham Centennial Spring/Summer 2013 Fellowship to work on research, scholarly, or creative projects in collaboration with your faculty mentor during the Spring/Summer 2013 term. [Prof. Dennis Bernstein]

Gerard Cruz receives a Rackham Centennial Spring/Summer 2013 Fellowship to work on research, scholarly, or creative projects in collaboration with your faculty mentor during the Spring/Summer 2013 term. [Prof. Dennis Bernstein]

Abhinav Dasari receives a Rackham Centennial Spring/Summer 2013 Fellowship to work on research, scholarly, or creative projects in collaboration with your faculty mentor during the Spring/Summer 2013 term. [Prof. Mirko Gamba]

Duncan Miller: 2013 Distinguished Leadership Award

Ben Brelje: 2013 Distinguished Achievement Award

Justin Amara‐Parent, Benjamin Brelje, George Konecny, Duncan Miller, Joseph Schafer, George M. Landes: 2013 Team Prize for 405 Project (Thanks to Don Geister!)

Christopher Reynolds: 2013 Arthur B. Singleton Prize

Sandro Salgueiro: 2013 Charles F. Barth, Jr. Prize

McIvor Award Committee, I am pleased to inform you that you have
been selected as one of the recipients of a 2013 Ivor K. McIvor Award. This award,
established to honor the memory of I.K. McIvor, the late and last Chairperson of the
Applied Mechanics and Engineering Science Department in the College of Engineering
at the University of Michigan, is presented annually to senior graduate students who have
demonstrated excellence in research and scholarship in an area of applied mechanics.
An award will be presented to you at the College of Engineering Honors Brunch Sunday, 17March, 2013 in the Michigan Union Ballroom.

Kentaro Hara: Richard and Eleanor Towner Prize for Outstanding PhD Research Recipients [Prof. Iain Boyd]
Ken's research is focused on developing numerical methods to describe complex nonequilibrium plasma interactions in spacecraft propulsion systems.

2013 Michigan Space Grant Consortium Awards
MSGC Graduate Fellowship Awards to the following Ph.D. Students:

  • Susan Cheng

Proposal:  Clouds, Radiation, and Forests:  Implications for Atmospheric CO2 Removal

  • Alexander Englesbe

Proposal Title:  A Highly Scalable Annular Geometry Ion Thruster

  • Sara Lu

Proposal Title:  Tactile and Cross-Model Change Blindness and Their Implications for Display Design

  • Adam Peczalski

Proposal Title:  Chip-Scale Precision Timing Unit For Pico-Satellites

Aerospace students win Michigan Clean Energy Challenge
A team of U-M graduate students (Tom Brady, Danny Ellis, and Ryan Moore) won the $50,000 top prize Friday in the Michigan Clean Energy Venture Challenge for their unmanned-aerial-vehicle technology. Read more at the College of Engineering's News Center or at The University Record.

Nhung Nguyen: 2013 Ivor K. Mclvor Award
The McIvor Award Committee has selected Nhung Neguyen as one of the recipients of a 2013 Ivor K. McIvor Award. This award, established to honor the memory of I.K. McIvor, the late and last Chairperson of the Applied Mechanics and Engineering Science Department in the College of Engineering at the University of Michigan, is presented annually to senior graduate students who have demonstrated excellence in research and scholarship in an area of applied mechanics.An award will be presented to you at the College of Engineering Honors Brunch on Sunday, 17 March, 2013 in the Michigan Union Ballroom. [Prof. Anthony Waas (AE) and Alan Wineman (ME)]

Adam Duran (and his team): Win the 2012 Federal Communications Commission Chairman's 2012 Award for Advancement in Accessibility [Prof. Sundararaghavan]

The award recognizes their outstanding efforts to advance communications accessibility for people with disability. The team has been invited to showcase their touch screen braille writer application at the FCC award ceremony on December 19, 2012. The team's braille app has been acknowledged in the following publications:

 


Karthik Kumar: Receives MEMS Best Paper Award [Prof. Luis Bernal]
Aero PhD student Karthik Kumar received the best paper award from the MEMS (Micro ElectroElectro Mechanical Systems) Systems division of ASME at the 2012 IMECE ASME congress in Houston.

"A Multiphysics Reduced Order Model of Valve Pumping in a 4-Stage Vacuum Micropump" [PDF]

Johann Dahm and Peter Klein: Win EGS 1st Place Award (in their technical session) [Prof. Chris Fidkowski & Prof. Matthias Ihme] Click here to view poster.

Title: Error Estimation and p-Adaptation in Hybridizable and Embedded Discontinuous Galerkin Methods

Johann P. S. Dahm, Peter N. Klein, [Prof. Krzysztof J. Fidkowski]

Abstract: We present a comparison of output-based error estimation and adaptation for recently developed hybridizable and embedded discontinuous Galerkin (DG) methods. Both hybridizable DG (HDG) and embedded DG (EDG) significantly reduce the number of globally coupled degrees of freedom compared to conventional DG, and differ only in the approximation space used for the numerical trace. Each retains the stability advantages and refinement (hp) flexibility enjoyed by DG. The methods are applied to a model multidimensional linear advection problem and are implemented in a shared p-adaptive framework to allow for comparison of the adaptation strategies. Order (p) adaptation is used to refine the solution, where regions of the primal and numerical trace are targeted based on an estimate of the local error magnitude. The error is estimated using an adjoint-weighted residual and a discrete fine-space adjoint approximation. Results show that adaptation reduces the error in the output for the same number of degrees of freedom. Numerical results demonstrate HDG and EDG can be combined with existing error estimation and adaptation strategies to improve robustness and accelerate convergence.

This work was funded, in part, by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Michigan.

Abhilasha Anna: Richard and Eleanor Towner Prize for Outstanding PhD Research Recipients [Prof. Iain Boyd]

Anna's research is focused on developing and using CFD models to study interactions between the gas and hypersonic vehicle surface during its high Mach (re-)entry into a planetary atmosphere.

Pavana Prabhakar: 2012 American Society for Composites Ph.D. Research Scholarship Award Recipient [Prof. Anthony Waas]

Pavana Prabhakar was chosen as one of the three recipients of the 2012 American Society for Composites Ph.D. Research Scholarship Award. The award is given to formally enrolled Ph.D. candidates in engineering or science whose dissertation research is focused on some aspect of composite materials.

John Hwang: 1st Prize Student Paper Award, 14th AIAA/ISSMO Multidisciplinary Analysis and Optimization Conference [Assoc. Prof. Quim Martins, Aerospace]

Please join us in congratulating John Hwang, PhD student of Prof. Joaquim Martins for winning 1st prize in the student paper competition for his paper and poster entitled "GeoMACH: Geometry-Centric MDAO of Aircraft Configurations with High Fidelity". The paper and poster can be downloaded from this page: http://mdolab.engin.umich.edu/content/geomach

The award was recognized during the Awards Luncheon and John received a $1000 monetary prize at the 14th AIAA/ISSMO Multidisciplinary Analysis and Optimization conference in Indianapolis.

Sara Spangelo: 2012 Best Student Paper Award at the AIAA GNC [Prof. James Cutler]

S.C. Spangelo and J.W. Cutler, “Optimization of Single-Satellite Operational Schedules Towards Enhanced Communication Capacity”, Proceedings of the Guidance, Navigation, and Control (GNC) Conference,Minneapolis, MN, August 2012. Find her paper here: http://exploration.engin.umich.edu/blog/?page_id=367

Hicham Alkandry: 2012 David Weaver Best Thermophysics AIAA Student Paper Award [Prof. Iain Boyd]

“Aerodynamic Interactions of Reaction Control System Jets on Mars Entry Aeroshells”

Jessica Arlas: 1st place in 2012 AIAA Student Conference Paper Competition

Benjamin Brelje: 2012 NASA Aeronautics Scholarship

Ethan Eagle: 2012 Student Leaders and Honors Distinguished Leadership Award

    Daniel Kiefer: 2012 Student Leaders and Honors Distinguished Leadership Award

    Abhishek Kumar: 2012 Student Leaders and Honors Achievement Award

    Vic Nardone: 2nd Annual Aerospace Propulsion Outreach Program Competition

    Evan Pineda: 2012 AIAA SDM ASC Composites Award Paper Award [Prof. Anthony Waas]

    "Experimental Study on Low-velocity Impact Behavior of Foam-cored Sandwich Panels."

    John Rumbell: 2nd Annual Aerospace Propulsion Outreach Program Competition

    David Schwertner: 3rd place in 2012 AIAA Student Conference Paper Competition

    Kimberly Trent: 2012-2013 Michigan Space Grant Consortium Graduate Fellowship Award [Prof. Alec Gallimore]

    UM’s Sigma Gamma Tau: 2012 Regional Sigma Gamma Tau Undergraduate Award