Spring 2013
Assistant Professor Mahmoud Hussein won a prestigious NSF CAREER award for his proposal, "Nonlinear, Dissipative Mechanics of Phononic Materials: An Integrated Researchand Education Plan."
Fall 2012
The AES graduate projects team, Hyperion Green Aircraft, won the "Best Paper Award" from the AIAA Design Engineering Technical Committee in January 2013. This project won the same award in 2012; its predecessor, which was on hyprid propulsion, won the award in 2011. (Advisor: J. Koster)
Recent Awards - Faculty
Professor Dan Scheeres has been selected to receive the prestigious American Astronautical Society's Dirk Brouwer Award for 2012. The AAS established this award to recognize those who have made significant technical contributions to space flight mechanics and astrodynamics.
DAYSTAR Project Balloon Flight
The Diurnal Star Tracking for Balloon-borne Attitude Determination (DAYSTAR) AES capstone senior design team, under the mentorship of Prof. Scott Palo, developed a prototype daytime star tracking system capable of providing pointing knowledge to a diurnal, lighter-than-air platform. Funding for the project came from Dr. Eliot Young of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder. Please see here for more details.
Recent Awards - Faculty
Professor Lakshmi Kantha has been elected an Associate Fellow in the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics .
Recent Awards - Students
AES PhD candidate Waqas Ahmed Qazi (advisor: Prof W. Emery) was selected as the Muneeb Kamal International Student of the Year. The CU-Boulder Office of International Education, sponsor of the award, cited Mr. Qazi's "outstanding contributions to promote international understanding" as the basis for his selection.
CubeSat Now in Science Mode
On Thursday, October 4, former NASA Chief Technologist Robert (Bobby) Braun, LASP Director Dan Baker, Prof. George Born, and others witnessed a rare scene: aerospace graduate students Lauren Blum and Quintin Schiller were commanding the AES CubeSat (built by students to study solar flares) to turn on its first detector. By early Friday morning, the first science data was received--very clean and beautiful. It has been three weeks since Prof Scott Palo received the first beacon at 4AM on 9/14 from the CubeSat (launched just the day before). The commissioning phase is now complete and science mode in full swing, with all four detectors on board sending data. (This report was filed by Prof. Xinlin Li; see http://lasp.colorado.edu/home/csswe.)
Universities Earn Billions in Inventions in 2011
According to the Chronicle on Higher Education, universities and their inventors earned in excess of $1.8 billion from commercializing their academic research in the 2011 research fiscal year. The University of Colorado is part of this trend, with a license income of $3.87 million with 50 licenses and options executed, 11 startup companies, 37 U.S. Patents issued, and 262 new patent applications. Read more here.
DANDE, a spacecraft designed and built by students at the Colorado Space Grant Consortium, shipped last month to the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory to undergo final testing before launch as a secondary payload on a SpaceX flight in 2013. Since 2007, dozens of CU-Boulder students have worked on the nanosatellite, which will measure variations in the thermosphere that create drag on orbiting satellites.
CUBESAT, a satellite carrying the Colorado Student Space Weather Experiment, will study solar flares. Developed by CU students under the direction of AES professors Scott Palo and Xinlin Li, CUBESAT may launch in August 2012 from Vandenburg Air Force Base. See http://lasp.colorado.edu/home/csswe.
Summer 2012
Smallest Supersonic Jet Engine Ever Made by Award-winning Professor
AES Prof Ryan Starkey,aided by students and his newly-founded company, Starkcor, is building a small supersonic jet engine to fit on a UAV weighing perhaps 110 pounds. Read more in Forbes here. Prof Starkey has also won one of 14 technology development awards to be demonstrated on a suborbital flight.
Spring 2012
Women Who Light the Community Award
Diane Dimeff, Executive Director of the Center for Space Entrepreneurship
(eSpace ) and scholar in residence in Aerospace Engineering Sciences at CU Boulder, received an award from the Boulder Chamber of Commerce and The Business Women's Leadership Group. The "Women Who Light the Community" award is given annually to five women who have made significant contributions through innovations and a committed effort to address a meaningful business or community need--locally, regionally, nationally, or globally. Diane will be honored at a luncheon on June 13, 2012.
Two AES Professors Receive 2011-2012 Boulder Faculty Assembly Awards
The Boulder Faculty Assembly announced that Professor Hanspeter Schaub is the recipient of the BFA Excellence in Teaching Award, and Professor Brian Argrow is the recipient of the BFA Excellence in Service Award. Dr. Schaub is the Associate Chair for Graduate Affairs in the Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences, and Dr. Argrow recently completed a five-year term as Associate Dean for Education in the College of Engineering and Applied Science.
Institute of Navigation Award
The Institute of Navigation has named Professor Penina Axelrad of CCAR as the winner of the Institute of Navigation Burka Award, which is "to recognize the best technical article having appeared in NAVIGATION, The Journal of The Institute of Navigation in the last year volume." Prof Axelrad is being recognized for her paper titled: “Collective Detection and Direct Positioning Using Multiple GNSS Satellites” that appeared in the Winter issue (Volume 58, No. 4).
AMS and Aviation Week
Two different publications feature activities of faculty and students in the Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences in their January 2012 issues: The Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society displays the RECUV equipment on its cover with an article written by RECUV faculty inside (go here), while Aviation Week's January 23/30 issue, "2012 Aerospace: Intelligence for an Essential Industry", describes Prof. Ryan Starkey's graduate student team that is building a small supersonic UAV named Gojett (click here for article, reproduced under permission from AW&ST ). This UAV is also featured on the CU News site.
CU-Boulder-led team to assess decline of Arctic sea ice in Alaska's Beaufort Sea
A national research team led by the University of Colorado Boulder is embarking on a two-year, multi-pronged effort to better understand the impacts of environmental factors associated with the continuing decline of sea ice in the Arctic Ocean. The team will use tools ranging from unmanned aircraft and satellites to ocean buoys in order to understand the characteristics and changes in Arctic sea ice.
Read the full press release in CU News
AGU Fellow
Professor William Emery has been elected a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union. Only one in a thousand members is elected to Fellowship of the AGU each year.
AIAA Fellow
Professor Jeffrey M. Forbes, chair of the Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences, was elected to the grade of Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. AIAA Fellows are persons of distinction who have made notable and valuable contributions to the arts, sciences, or technology of aeronautics or astronautics.
Best Paper Award
The "Hyperion Green Aircraft Project", an AES graduate project sponsored by Professor Jean Koster, received the "Best Paper Award" from the AIAA Design Engineering Technical Committee. Prof Koster and graduate student Lydia McDowell made the presentation. Student engineering teams developed a 3m (10ft) wingspan, composite model aircraft inspired after the NASA-Boeing X-48B blended wing body to use as a test bed for advanced technical studies. The aircraft project started as an international collaboration to develop an aerial vehicle to investigate new technologies with a focus on performance efficiencies. An international team of 32 graduate and undergraduate students conceived, designed, implemented, and operated the aircraft within 9 months. Project partners are UCB, The University of Sydney, Australia, and the University of Stuttgart, Germany. Distributed eight hours apart the three teams of students relay select work daily so that work progress can “Follow-The-Sun” with three workdays compressed into 24 hours. Flight testing was conducted successfully by the global team in Colorado during the month of April 2011.
Fall 2011
CU-Boulder REDCROC team presents at AIAA Space 2011 Conference
The University of Colorado at Boulder team, REsearch and Development for the Capture and Removal of Orbital Clutter (REDCROC), won 1st place at the 2011 Revolutionary Aerospace Systems Concepts - Academic Linkage (RASC-AL) Forum this past June. REDCROC (advisor: Donna S. Gerren) presented “Junk Hunter: Autonomous Rendezvous, Capture, and De-Orbit of Orbital Debris” (team photo below). RECROC presented next at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Space 2011 Conference (Sept 27-29) in Long Beach, California.
In the September issue of PRISM Magazine, an ASEE publication, former astronaut Jim Voss shares his thoughts on teaching Aerospace engineering students at CU Boulder. American Society for Engineering Education story (ASEE)
Summer 2011
National Society of Black Engineer Students Help Dreams Come True
Undergraduate and graduate students are finding real-world opportunities they once only dreamed of through the aerospace engineering sciences department at the University of Colorado Boulder. Over the summer of 2011, students worked at CU-Boulder’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics and at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, helping to develop scientific instruments that will actually be launched into space. See here for story.
CU-Boulder undergraduate Alijah Smith calibrates and tests instruments for
a spacecraft being built at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics.
International PHOCUS campaign
An instrument from the University of Colorado was launched on a Swedish sounding rocket, PHOCUS, as part of an international campaign on July 21st, 2011 at 7:00 UT. The campaign is targeting the characterization of noctilucent clouds that form at around 82 km over the summer polar regions. The Colorado Dust Detector (CDD) instrument is part of the payload to measure the number density of the charged fraction of the nanometer sized dust particles. The instrument was developed by CU professors Zoltan Sternovsky (Aerospace Engineering Sciences) and Scott Roberson (Physics) and built and calibrated by CU undergraduate student Shannon Dickson.
CU-Boulder graduate finishes 3,000 mile bike ride for Graves' Disease awareness
University of Colorado engineering graduate Michaela Cui finished a 3,000-mile bike ride that she embarked on to raise awareness about Graves' disease. Cui was diagnosed with the auto-immune disorder that is marked by an overactive thyroid while she was a student at CU. She earned her bachelor's degree in aerospace engineering in May and minored in electrical engineering. She and two friends -- Chris Doudna and Ben Weerts -- on the "Greater than Graves" team departed in June for the trek. Doudna and Cui crossed their "finish line" at San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge on Wednesday, ending their 45-day journey. Weerts completed the first 1,000 miles before departing for another commitment.
CU-Boulder and NASA's space shuttle program: triumphs and tragedies
When NASA's 30-year-old space shuttle program is shuttered following the Atlantis mission in July, the University of Colorado Boulder will look back at a rich relationship filled with triumph and tragedy and look ahead to an evolving international program of government and private efforts that will send humans and cargo into orbit.
Read the full CU News story (with videos) here: CU News
CU-Boulder RASC-AL team wins first place
Eighteen competing teams presented their concepts to a panel of NASA and Industry leaders from June 6-8, 2011 at the 2011 Revolutionary Aerospace Systems Concepts - Academic Linkage (RASC-AL) Forum held in Cocoa Beach, Florida. The finalists were both undergraduate teams presenting on the "Orbital Debris Mitigation Approaches" theme. The University of Colorado at Boulder team, REsearch and Development for the Capture and Removal of Orbital Clutter (REDCROC), won 1st place and the University of Washington took 2nd place in the competition. REDCROC, advised by Aerospace Engineering Sciences faculty member Donna S. Gerren, presented a concept solution titled: Junk Hunter: Autonomous Rendezvous, Capture, and De-Orbit of Orbital Debris. Both teams were awarded with a reserved presentation slot and stipend to attend the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Space 2011 Conference in Long Beach, California. The teams will present condensed 20-minute versions of their RASC-AL presentations at the prestigious conference.
CU-Boulder to participate in NASA mission to land on an asteroid
A University of Colorado Boulder team will be part of a mission selected yesterday by NASA to launch a spacecraft to an asteroid and pluck samples from its surface to better understand the formation of the solar system and perhaps even the first inklings of life. Professor Daniel Scheeres of CU-Boulder's aerospace engineering sciences department is the radio science team leader on the OSIRIS-REx mission, which is expected to bring more than $3 million in research funding to CU-Boulder over the mission lifetime.
Read the full CU News release here: CU News
AES Graduate to Bike 3,000 Miles for Graves' Disease
Michaela Cui graduated on May 5, 2011 from the Aerospace Engineering Sciences department at CU Boulder. Starting June 1, she and two friends will start biking 3,000 miles, from Anchorage, Alaska to San Francisco, California, to raise awareness of Graves' Disease. Michaela became ill with this auto-immune disorder in her junior year but managed to graduate on time; she is an inspiration to her fellow students.
Read the Daily Camera story here: Daily Camera
Update: Bike ride started. Michaela Cui and friends have started their long journey. Read more information at: newsminer.com
Spring 2011
CU DBF team places 11th
The 2011 Cessna Aircraft Company/Raytheon Missile Systems Design/Build/Fly (DBF) Competition Flyoff was held at TIMPA Field in Tucson, AZ on the weekend of April 15-17, 2011. This was the 15th year the competition was held. A record 82 teams entered. The contest theme this year was a Soldier Portable UAV. The airplane had to fit in a commercially available suitcase meeting airline carry-on requirements. The first mission was a “dash to critical target” with no payload followed by an Ammo Re-supply mission (steel bar payload) and a Medical Supply mission (golf balls). As usual, the total score is the product of the flight score and written report score. First Place went to Georgia Tech University Team, Second Place went to University of Southern California Team and Third Place went to Purdue University Team. CU placed 11th out of a field of 82, a very good showing. The CU DBF team was sponsored by RECUV, and was advised by Brian Argow and Donna Gerren.
Senior Projects Sweep AIAA Region V Conference
For the second year in a row AES Senior Projects teams have swept First, Second, and Third places at the AIAA Region V conference. With First place, and going on to Nationals, is project SOLSTICE (Standalone electric Optimized Lifting System, Transitionable Internal Combustion Engine). In Second place is project HALO (HySoR Apparatus for Launch Operations). Third place was shared by project EPICSat (Express Payload Integration CubeSat) with another team from Saint Louis University.
Recent Graduate Student Awards
AES PhD student Felipe Nievinski (whose advisor is Prof Kristine Larson) was awarded a Geodesy Section Outstanding Student Paper Award for his presentation at the 2010 Fall Meeting of the AGU in San Francisco, California.
MS student Matt Cannella (advisor: Prof Ryan Starkey) was awarded a three-year NSF Graduate Research Fellowship (GRFP).
PhD student Michael Frazier (advisor: Prof Mahmoud Hussein) was awarded an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship for his project, "Theory of Dissipative Acoustical Metamaterials with Application to Subwavelength Imaging."
PhD candidates Nicholas Pedatella (advisors: Prof Kristine Larson and Prof Jeff Forbes) and Jill Tombasco (advisor: Prof Penny Axelrad) are recipients of the 2011 John A. Vise Graduate Student Excellence Award (see Graduate Awards).
Nicholas Pedatella is also the winner of the College of Engineering and Applied Science's Outstanding Dissertaition Award. This award is in recognition of the outstanding quality of his doctoral disseration: "Response of the Ionosphere-Plasmasphere System to Periodic Forcing".
2011 CU Honors Journal
The Aerospace Senior Projects team known as "Solstice" will have a student paper included in the 2011 CU Honors Journal. The team members and their advisor, Dr. Donna Gerren, will be honored at a reception to be held in the Norlin Library Center for British and Irish Studies on April 17, 2011 (details).
CU graduate student offered position with the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Board of Directors
MS candidate Matt Canella (advisor: Ryan Starkey) has been offered the position as the Young Professional Liaison to the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Board of Directors for 2011-2013.
First Successful Test Flight of Dream Chaser Model
The Dynamically Scaled Model of the Dream Chaser vehicle designed and built by UCB's Research and Engineering Center for Unmanned Vehicles (RECUV) and Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) had a successful test flight at NASA'S Dryden Flight Research Center the week of December 6, 2010. SNC's Dream Chaser vehicle is derived form the HL-20 lifting body which NASA started researching almost 30 years ago, and is designed to carry up to seven people to the International Space Station and back; it had never been flown before. Special kudos go to Profs. Ryan Starkey and Brian Argrow, and especially to Aerospace students Josh Fromm and Eric Hall, who worked exceptionally hard designing and building this vehicle in conjunction with SNC partners and another six students working on software. Read the NASA feature article here: Dream Chaser Model Drops in at NASA Dryden. UPDATE: Watch the Discovery Channel Canada's coverage of the drop here: Discovery Channel Canada Dream Chaser. Read a 12/31/10 Boulder Daily Camera story on the Dream Chaser here: Daily Camera Dream Chaser.
New Mexico Collaboration
Through an AFOSR grant, faculty from Aerospace Engineering Sciences will mentor students from the New Mexico State University (NMSU). The NMSU students will likely come to CU-Boulder campus for in-person assistance with the grant, “Libration Point Orbit Utilization for Tactical Advantage in Communications, Surveillance, and Risk Mitigation.”
Fall 2010
New Inventor of the Year Award
Prof Jean Koster will receive the New Inventor of the Year Award from the CU Technology Transfer Office during a special banquet on Tuesday, January 18 (see here for details). Prof Koster and the students on his research team have done work that expands the concept of hybrid vehicles to airplanes, which led to the formation of a new company, Tigon Ener Tec.
Prof Jean Koster with David Allen and Kate
Tallman of the Technology Transfer Office
AIAA Technical Committee Best Paper Award
Prof Jean Koster won the "Best Paper" award from the Design Engineering Technical Committee at the AIAA 49th Aerospace Sciences Meeting in Orlando, FL on January 5, 2011. His paper's title is"Hybrid Electric Integrated Optimized System (HELIOS) - Design of a Hybrid Propulsion System for Aircraft".
AES Professors with Italian Connections
Prof Lakshmi Kantha has been appointed as an Associate Scientist at the Istituto di Scienze Marine (Institute of Marine Research), Venice, Italy. It is one of the institutes of the Italian Consiglio Nationale delle Ricerche (National Research Council), equivalent to our NSF. Prof Kantha is only one of the two non-Italian scientists to hold this position in the history of ISMAR.
Prof William Emery has been reappointed for another three years as an adjunct professor in Informatics (computer science) in the Engineering College at Tor Vegata University in Rome.
First Successful Test Flight of Dream Chaser Model
The Dynamically Scaled Model of the Dream Chaser vehicle designed and built by UCB's Research and Engineering Center for Unmanned Vehicles (RECUV) and Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) had a successful test flight at NASA'S Dryden Flight Research Center the week of December 6, 2010. SNC's Dream Chaser vehicle is derived form the HL-20 lifting body which NASA started researching almost 30 years ago, and is designed to carry up to seven people to the International Space Station and back; it had never been flown before. Special kudos go to Profs. Ryan Starkey and Brian Argrow, and especially to Aerospace students Josh Fromm and Eric Hall, who worked exceptionally hard designing and building this vehicle in conjunction with SNC partners and another six students working on software. See "Dream Chaser Model Drops in at NASA Dryden". A 12/31/10 Boulder Daily Camera story on the Dream Chaser can be found here.
Lidar Success at McMurdo Station, Antarctica
The first Fe signals (372 nm) from Arrival Heights, Antarctica, were received at 1:50am UT, on December 16, 2010. The first light is a milestone for the lidar project, directed by Prof Xinzhao Chu (AES and CIRES) and her team, seen in the photo below (Student Zhibin Yu, CIRES scientist Wentao Huang, Prof. Xinzhao Chu, Students John Smith and Weichun Fong). Lidar integrates the technologies of laser spectroscopy and advanced electro-optics to produce a single system with unmatched measurement capability for studying the middle and upper atmospheres, deemed crucial for understanding climate change.
CCAR Alumnus Named NASA Chief Scientist
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden has named Waleed Abdalati the agency's chief scientist, effective Jan. 3. Abdalati will serve as the principal adviser to the NASA administrator on agency science programs, strategic planning and the evaluation of related investments. Abdalati is currently the director of the Earth Science and Observation Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He also is an associate professor in the university's geography department.
Abdalati received a Master of Science in aerospace engineering sciences from the University of Colorado in 1991, and a doctorate in 1996 from the Department of Geography at the University of Colorado, where he was one of the first graduates of the university's Program in Atmospheric and Ocean Sciences.
For information about NASA and agency programs, visit: http://www.nasa.gov
New Research Breakthroughs
Prof. Kristine Larson of AES collaborated with Eric Small of geology and John Braun of COSMIC/UCAR on new ways to use GPS satellite signals to measure
soil moisture, snow depth, and vegetation growth. For details, see http://www.earthscope.org/es_doc/onsite/inSights_fall10.pdf
National Society for Black Engineers (NSBE)
The Department sent six AES students to the Region 6 NSBE Conference in California in November 2010 as part of its new AES Diversity Initiative. Student Advisor Claire Yang also pulled together an AES Diversity Task Force comprised of 35 undergraduate and graduate students who will help to increase the pipeline for women and under represented minorities to apply to both the Undergraduate and Graduate Program in Aerospace Engineering Sciences at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Entrepreneurship in Aerospace Engineering Sciences
Tigon EnerTec Inc, led by Prof. Jean Koster, is off to a good start. Tigon grew from an AES Senior Project called HELIOS, and the HELIOS project, which enables efficient management of hybrid engines in aircraft, is a recent graduate of the CU-Boulder Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute (RASEI) Market Assessment Program. See below for numerous press releases about this company, one of the first to be incubated by eSpace and the AES department's recent entrepreneurial approach to research.
http://cutechtransfer.blogspot.com/2010/09/tigon-enertec-to-commercialize-cu.html
http://www.bcbr.com/article.asp?id=53583
https://www.cusys.edu/newsletter/2010/09-15/techtransf.html
http://www.denverpost.com/business/ci_16076524
AES Research Professor Awarded Honorary Degree
Dr. Timothy Killeen, Lyall Research Professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences, was awarded an Honorary DSc degree at University College London on September 6, 2010. Dr. Killeen is Assistant Director for Geosciences at the US National Science Foundation and has been tasked by President Obama's Science Advisor to chair the development of a U.S.A. strategic plan in climate science. See here for more details on his career.
ICESat RIP
On August 30, 2010 the Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) returned to Earth in the Barents Sea after seven successful years on orbit taking laser altimeter data of polar ice. About 500 lbs of the 2000-lb satellite reached the surface, NASA estimates. Ball Aerospace built the spacecraft; CCAR built the operational orbit determination software and special software to allow pointing the altimeter at targets of opportunity, and LASP operated the spacecraft. Two AES undergraduates helped ICESat through its final hours (here). Prof George Born, Director of CCAR, acknowledged individual contributors to this successful mission.
Asteroid Study in Nature Magazine
Research on paired asteroids by an international team including Prof Dan Scheeres of AES and PhD candidate Seth Jacobson of UCB's Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences department is featured in the Aug 26 issue of "Nature". Surprisingly, sunlight plays a key role in "birthing" asteroids. See CU's press release for more information.
AES Alumna Inducted to Space Camp Hall of Fame
Andrea Hanson (MS-2004, PhD-2008, UCB Aerospace Engineering Sciences) was inducted to the Space Camp Hall of Fame recently. Andrea is currently a post-doctoral research scientist/engineer at the University of Washington. See our Alumni page for more information!
Two AES Professors Receive Provost Awards
Professor Hanspeter Schaub and Prof. Jeffrey Thayer of the Aerospace Engineering Sciences department were each selected to receive one of the Provost's Faculty Achievement Awards. Dr. Schaub was recognized for his work on the control of multiple spacecraft flying in formation. The awarding committee noted: "Your ingenious idea to use electrostatic forces of attraction and repulsion rather than thrusters to control three spacecraft has clear implications for even larger formations of spacecraft." The faculty committee was equally impressed with Dr. Thayer's ground breaking article in the Journal of Geophysical Research, and his discovery that "atmospheric drag on small satellites results from the impact of periodic solar wind streams created by cool pockets on the sun. This work offers both a key scientific finding and practical applications for the positioning of satellites." Awards will be presented at the Fall Convocation in the Old Main Chapel on October 15 at 1:30 pm.
University of Colorado Explores "Living" Wall Concept
Led by Dr. John Zhai, an associate professor of civil, environmental, and architectural engineering at CU, a research team that includes Prof. Kurt Maute of AES, proposes to create "high-tech walls that essentially breathe to control the inside temperature" much like a human body regulates its own temperature. The $1.97 million grant is funded by NSF. See the Daily Camera story here.
FAA Chooses Center of Excellence
On August 19, 2010 the Federal Aviation Administration announced the formation of a Center of Excellence for Commercial Space Transportation, tasked with researching issues of space launch operations and traffic management, among other space-related matters. CU-Boulder is one of eight universities and other institutions which will collectively make up the center, with Prof David Klaus of the Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences serving as the principal investigator for the CU-led portion of the project. See Daily Camera story here.
Summer 2010
Professor Palo and the three AIAA Small Satellite Conference Awardees
AIAA Small Satellite Conference Awards
For the second year running, UCB students placed high in the Frank J. Redd Student Scholarship (paper) Competition at the AIAA Small Satellite Conference in Logan, UT. Aerospace PhD candidate David Gerhardt (advisor: Prof Scott Palo), won 2nd place for his paper, "Passive Magnetic Attitude Control for CubeSat Spacecraft" and was awarded $7500. Prof Xinlin Li's students Quintin Schiller (AES, PhD) and Abhishek Mahendrakumar (ECEE, MS) won 3rd place and $3250 each for "REPTile: A Miniaturized Detector for a CubeSat Mission to Measure Relativistic Particles in Near-Earth Space". All three students are members of the Colorado Student Space Weather Experiment, an NSF funded project to design, build and fly a cubesat to improve our fundamental understanding of high energy particles in the near Earth space environment. See the summary for day 3 at www.smallsat.org for interviews from the student competition.
First Place in International Poster Competition (ICES)
AES PhD student Jonathan Metts (advisor: Prof David Klaus) received a first place award in the student poster competition held during the 40th Annual International Conference on Environmental Systems (ICES), an AIAA forum held from July 11-15, 2010 in Barcelona, Spain. His poster was titled ‘Electrochromic Radiator Impact on Apollo Sublimator Water Consumption.’ This was the third year in a row that he placed in the poster competition. Additionally, Jonathan co-chaired a session and gave an oral presentation at the meeting that accompanied a paper on a related topic.
Third Win for HELIOS
The HELIOS team won second prize and $1500 in cash at the student design competition of the CDIO Academy at the International CDIO conference in Montreal, Canada, June 15-17. Nineteen teams competed from around the world: Europe, Australia, Asia, North America. The team sizes ranged from 3 to 300 students. All 3 winning teams followed very similar rigorous systems engineering procedures as those applied in the AES senior design program, confirming that the Aerosopace Engineering Sciences senior design course is one of the best in the world!
First Place in International Poster Competition (ICES)
AES PhD student Jonathan Metts (advisor: Prof David Klaus) received a first place award in the student poster competition held during the 40th Annual International Conference on Environmental Systems (ICES), an AIAA forum held from July 11-15, 2010 in Barcelona, Spain. His poster was titled ‘Electrochromic Radiator Impact on Apollo Sublimator Water Consumption.’ This was the third year in a row that he placed in the poster competition. Additionally, Jonathan co-chaired a session and gave an oral presentation at the meeting that accompanied a paper on a related topic.
Second Place Win at RASC-AL
CU Aerospace students Trent Hanson and Nic Zinner took second place in the undergraduate category at the Revolutionary Aerospace Systems Concept-Academic Linkage (RASC-AL) national competition held in Florida from June 7-9. Competing against twelve other undergraduate teams selected to participate, this was CU's first appearance at this national competition. RASC-AL takes real-world NASA engineering design challenges and provides a forum for engineering students across the U.S.A. to compete for the best solution. See here for more details (soon to be published).
Commitment to Excellence Award
On the occasion of her ten-year anniversary with the College, Program Assistant Deborah Mellblom has received a College of Engineering and Applied Science's Commitment to Excellence Award, which carries a $500 stipend and recognizes staff members for continuous service to the College who have also earned the highest performance rating for the most current three years.
Spring 2010
HELIOS Wins Again!
On May 7 the AES/CU-Daniel Webster College senior design team known as HELIOS won Third place at the 4th Annual National Security Innovation Competition (NSIC). The competition included graduate student teams with seven US universities present. Judges included several directors, hailing from such diverse agencies as Homeland Security, MITRE, NORAD/USNORTHCOM, Raytheon, a venture capital firm, the patent group at a law firm, and a federal laboratory consortium in Los Alamos. The team received a trophy and $1000 in cash.
Five AES Graduate Students Win Amelia Earhart Fellowships
From left--Aurore Sibois, Jennifer Mindock, Laura Stiles, Jill Tombasco, and Christine Hartzell, at the Boulder Downtown Mall. (Photo by Ann Brookover)
HELIOS Wins First Place AIAA Region I-NE Student Paper Conference
Four undergraduates at Daniel Webster College (DWC) partnered with seven seniors in CU's Aerospace Engineering Sciences department to form a team known as HELIOS. Its mission was to design and build a hybrid solar powered UAV capable of improving the efficiency of current UAV technology. The DWC team presented at the AIAA Region I-NE Student Paper Conference and walked away with First place. This means that two AES teams (HELIOS and CUBOAT) will be competing in January 2011 at the annual AIAA Student Paper Conference.
CU's Aerospace Engineering Sciences Senior Design Projects Sweep AIAA Awards
The top three awards at the AIAA Region V Student Paper Conference (held in Wichita, KS in April 2010) for best papers in the team category went to three AES Senior Design Projects: CUBOAT (First place); TREST (Second place); and DANTE (Third place). CUBOAT is eligible to compete in the AIAA national student paper competition in Orlando next January. See here for details on the projects.
Among the Top Ten in AIAA Design, Build and Fly Competition
The CU team called the Buff Bambinos, an AES senior project sponsored by RECUV and Lockheed Martin, placed 7th out of 69 teams at the international AIAA DBF competition in Wichita, KS (April 16-18). Each student team had to fly with an airplane that they designed and built specifically for this competition, and submit a 60 page report. The Babminos received a score of 93 on their report (ranking 6th) with the top report score getting a 96 - a very tight competition. They successfully completed their 3 required mission flights with very good scores, competing against top-ranked schools such as MIT, USC, UCLA, Texas, Oklahoma State, Purdue and George Tech. Dr. Brian Argrow sponsored and mentored the team, and Dr. Donna Gerren, faculty advisor to the Buff Bambinos, traveled to Wichita to cheer them on.
Winter 2009-2010
March 12, 2010 Graduate Student Awards and Graduate Candidates Visit
On Friday, March 12, The AES department held a celebratory luncheon in the midst of its graduate candidate recruitment visit to honor Jonathan Metts and David Wiese as recipients of the 2010 John A. Vise Graduate Student Excellence Awards, and Steven Mitchell, who received the AES Graduate Student Service Award. Ann Brookover, the graduate student advisor for AES, received the Department's Employee Recognition Award.
Prof Dave Klaus and Jonathan Metts Prof Steve Nerem and David Wiese
Steven Mitchell and Ann Brookover Ann and Department Chair Jeff Forbes
Faculty from each focus area presented Graduate student candidates enjoyed
research highlights to AES Graduate a break before going on a tour of AES
Program student candidates. labs and meeting with faculty.
We Want Our Future!
AES graduate students Bradley Cheetham and Bruce Davis are developing an initiative aimed at inspiring youth and strengthening the nation’s education in science, technology, engineering, and math. Called "We Want Our Future", the project aims to collect more than 100,000 postcards from young students around the country graphically depicting what each student imagines to be the future of space exploration.; See here for full details
Tuskegee Airmen Mile High Visit
High School students and their parents, hosted by the Tuskegee Airmen, visited the Aerospace department on the Boulder campus on February 20th. Former astronaut Joe Tanner gave a presentation that included his own photos of the International Space Station. Alumni from the Tuskegee program who work with the BOLD Center held a panel discussion and Space Grant volunteers led an engineering activity with legos.
Alumni, Tuskegee Airmen, and AES Chair Jeff Forbes (center)
ION Thurlow Award to Dennis Akos
AES Professor Dennis Akos has been awarded the Institute of Navigation Thurlow Award for 2009, based on his software radio research for satellite navigation. The purpose of the ION Thurlow Award is to recognize outstanding contributions to the science of navigation. It was created as a memorial in honor of Colonel Thomas L. Thurlow, U.S. Army Corps, a brilliant engineer, skillful pilot, and able officer who contributed significantly to the development and testing of navigation equipment and the training of navigators and pilots. See here for more details.
UCB Student-built Cube Satellite to Fly in Space
Hermes, a tiny satellite built by a team of UCB undergraduates (most of them aerospace majors) is one of three university satellites to be attached to a Taurus XL launch vehicle that also will launch NASA's Glory mission to study solar radiation. Part of a NASA space education initiative, Herme is scheduled for launch in November 2010. See Press Release.
AES Professor Penina Axelrad Wins College Service Award
The College of Engineering and Applied Science recognized Penny Axelrad's exemplary service by presenting her with the 2009 Max S. Peters Service Award at an event on Friday, 29 January 2010.
UCB Faculty, Students Sweep AIAA Space Research and Education Awards
At the January 2010 meeting of the American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) held in Orlando, Florida, AES Chair Jeffrey M. Forbes and LASP Director Daniel Baker, plus three CU aerospace graduate students were honored with prestigious research awards. See Press Release for details.
CU Students to Build Tiny Spacecraft
The National Science Foundation has awarded the Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences and CU-Boulder's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics $840,000 for graduate students to build a spacecraft weighing less than 5 pounds to observe energetic particles in space. Combined with data from other sources, the data collected by the spacecraft will enable us to learn more about space weather. See Press Release.
Commitment to Excellence Award
Undergraduate Advisor Claire Yang is one of the first recipients of the College of Engineering and Applied Science's Commitment to Excellence Award, which carries a $500 stipend and recognizes staff members "who have reached a five-year anniversary...of continuous service to the College and have also earned the highest performance rating for the most current three years."
Jeffrey M. Forbes Selected for AIAA Losey Atmospheric Sciences Award
Professor Jeff Forbes, Glenn Murphy Endowed Chair and Chair of the Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences, will be presented the prestigious American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Robert M. Losey Atmospheric Sciences Award at the awards luncheon on Tuesday, 5 January 2010, in conjunction with the 48th AIAA Aerospace Sciences Meeting in Orlando, Florida. The Losey Award is presented to Dr. Forbes "to recognize his extensive contributions to our knowledge and understanding of the re-entry, aerobraking and orbital drag enviroments of Earth, Mars, and Venus."