February 2012 eNotes

A CU Space Grant team comprised of 13 freshmen and sophomores won a seat for its payload on the 2012 High-Altitude Student Platform balloon flight.

HASP is designed to carry up to 12 student payloads to an altitude of 36 kilometers with flight durations of 15 to 36 hours. The CU Space Grant team won one of the four coveted large payloads, more typically won by graduate student projects.

The HASP program is facilitated by Louisiana Space Consortium and supported by the NASA Balloon Program Office. CU students submitted their proposal for the competition in December as a follow-on from the fall ASEN 2500 Gateway to Space class.  

The new CU HASP team includes aerospace students Gabrielle Massone (project manager), Glenda Alvarenga (systems engineer), Jacob Broadway, Greg McQuie, Dalton Smith, Janelle Montoya, Gloria Chen, Corey Wilson, Calder Lane, and Jannine Vela, along with Vincent Staverosky of mechanical, open option student Nicole Ela, and James Busse in astronomy.

Project Helios will image the sun in Hydrogen-Alpha and Infrared wavelengths utilizing customized optics and an active pointing system.  Mentors for the project include Dr. James Green of the Center for Astrophysics and Space Astronomy.

Congratulations to the following individuals on their outstanding achievements:

Faculty

• Diane McKnight of civil, environmental, and architectural engineering was elected to the National Academy of Engineering. She was recognized for “elucidating the interrelationship between natural organic matter and heavy metals in streams and lakes.”
• Jason Marden of electrical, computer, and energy engineering has been awarded an Air Force Office of Scientific Research Young Investigator Award. The grant is one of 48 awarded to scientists and engineers from a field of 200 proposals.
• Bernard Amadei of civil, environmental, and archtiectural engineering, who was recently appointed a science envoy by the U.S. State Department, has been awarded a Dean's Faculty Fellowship for the spring semester.
• Amy Javernick-Will of civil, environmental, and architectural engineering received an Outstanding Presentation award at the 2011 Engineering Project Organizations Conference. 
• Jean Koster of aerospace engineering sciences and graduate student Lydia McDowell received the Best Paper Award from the AIAA Design Engineering Technical Committee for their presentation on the Hyperion Green Aircraft Project.
• John Daily of mechanical engineering was elected Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
• William Emery of aerospace engineering sciences was elected a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union.
• Jeffrey Forbes of aerospace engineering sciences was elected a Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
• Mark Borden of mechanical engineering was invited to give talks on his research in microbubbles at the 17th European Ultrasound Contrast Symposium in Rotterdam sponsored by Erasmus Medical Center, and at the Institute of Biomedical Imaging at Oxford University, in January.
• Penny Axelrad of aerospace engineering sciences has received the Institute of Navigation Burka Award for the best technical article having appeared in the journal Navigation in the last year. Her paper was titled Collective Detection and Direct Positioning Using Multiple GNSS Satellites.

Students

• Jessica Kaminsky, a PhD student in civil engineering, was awarded the EPA Star Fellowship.
• Elizabeth Jordan in civil engineering received the Outstanding PhD Student award at the 2011 Engineering Project Organizations Conference.

Staff

• Araceli Warren of civil, environmental, and architectural engineering was selected to receive the Employee Recognition Award for January.