Congratulation to Smead Aerospace PhD student Anivid Pedrós Faura for earning a 2022 Zonta Amelia Earhart Fellowship!
The program, open to students worldwide, recognizes up to 35 women annually pursuing doctoral degrees in aerospace engineering and space sciences. It seeks to expand the number of women in the aerospace industry to reach gender equity.
Pedrós Faura is a third year PhD student from Barcelona, Spain. She is conducting her doctoral research under the leadership of Professor Jay McMahon.
Her research focuses on modeling the behavior of active small bodies like asteroids and comets with the goal to build better dynamical environment models to enable safe close-proximity operations.
She is currently working on understanding the particle dynamics around small bodies and the mechanisms that result in mass loss. Specifically, she wishes to build robust guidance algorithms and contribute to high-fidelity dynamical models so that active small bodies become reachable targets.
As part of her research, she has been working on improving the current state-of-the-art models for cometary drag force and gravity models suitable for irregular bodies.
Zonta International is a global organization of professionals empowering women through service and advocacy. The Fellowship was established in 1938 in honor of famed pilot and Zonta member, Amelia Earhart.