2023 Aerospace PhD Applicant Visit Day
Date: Friday, February 17 (optional activity scheduled Saturday, February 18)
Location: Aerospace Engineering Sciences Building, East Campus, 3775 Discovery Drive, Boulder CO 80303
Recommended arrival time and date: Afternoon of Thursday, February 16
Hotel Accommodations: Homewood Suites - Boulder – 4950 Baseline Rd, Boulder, CO 80303 - check in is available beginning at 3:00 pm, reservations are under individual names
Meals:We will provide dinner the evening of Thursday, February 16 and all meals on Friday, February 17, 2022.
Attire:
Thursday, February 16 – Casual
Friday, February 17 – Business casual
Saturday, February 18 – Some optional activities will involve the outdoors in a snowy mountainous setting. Please bring clothing and accessories to stay warm and dry if you wish to participate.
Layers are recommended as Boulder weather can be unpredictable!
Travel Costs Reimbursement: The Department is able to reimburse you up to $500 in eligible airfare and ground transportation costs (or mileage if you are driving) after the conclusion of the Visit Day.
Questions about the reimbursement process can be directed to our accountant, Jacqui Stang. Please make sure to cc aerofinancehelp@colorado.edu to ensure a prompt reply.
Schedule
Thursday, February 16
- 3:00pm – Check-in at Homewood Suites
- 7:00pm - 9:00 pm: Current Aerospace Student Panel and Pizza Dinner at the Homewood Suites
Friday, February 17
- 7:30am – Breakfast and Check-in at the Homewood Suites Commissary
- Additional Check-in at the Aerospace Building starting at 8:00am for visitors staying elsewhere – lighter fare available
- 8:00 - 8:15am – Shuttle from Homewood Suites to Aerospace Building
- 9:00am – Kickoff - Nicole Simmons, Smead AES Graduate Program Manager - AERO 120 (Main Auditorium)
- 9:00am – Smead Aerospace Department Welcome – Dr. Hanspeter Schaub, Schaden Leadership Chair • Glenn Murphy Endowed Chair – AERO 120
- 9:10am – Graduate Program Overview – Dr. Jay McMahon, Associate Professor • Associate Chair for Graduate Studies • Smead Faculty Fellow – AERO 120
- 9:50 am – Break
- 10:00 am – Focus Area Breakouts – Deep dive into the research and faculty of each focus area.
- Astrodynamics & Satellite Navigation Systems – AERO 120 classroom
- Autonomous Systems – AERO 224L Conference Room
- Bioastronautics – 303 Conference Room
- Fluids, Structures and Materials – 403 Conference Room
- Remote Sensing, Earth, and Space Sciences – 203 Conference Room
- 11:00 – Break
- 11:15 am – Student Experience Q&A with Department Faculty – AERO 120
- A chance for an open conversation with some of our faculty, including our focus area leads, about aspects of working and studying in the Smead Aerospace PhD program, and a chance to ask faculty questions about their expectations of you, air any concerns you may have, and gain a better sense of how we work to ensure you have the best possible experience during your time as a student here. Feel free to continue asking these kinds of questions to current aerospace students and to follow up with faculty during lunch and in the afternoon faculty/applicant one-on-ones.
- 12:00pm – Catered lunch with Faculty from Kalita Grill Greek Cafe
- Lunch will available in the lobby, and seating with our faculty will be in the AERO 111 classroom off of the lobby.
- 1:00pm – 5:00pm – 1-on-1 meetings with prospective faculty advisors:
- This might be your first interaction with a potential faculty advisor, or your fourth! This is an opportunity for you and our faculty to get to know one another better, discuss research opportunities and career goals, and to make sure both individuals would feel comfortable working together for years to come. More interactions are welcome–and encouraged–beyond this one meeting, before and after the PhD Applicant Visit Day.
- Concurrent Activities During One-on-One meetings (1:00pm – 5:00pm)
- 224L Conference Room “Applicant Hangout HQ” open for visiting doctoral students
- + Movies, snacks, soft drinks, and a visit by emotional support doggies.
- 2:00-4:30 pm – Student Organization Fair - first floor lobby
- + coffee, tea, hot chocolate bar and cookies
- 224L Conference Room “Applicant Hangout HQ” open for visiting doctoral students
- 1:00-5:00 pm – Laboratory Open Houses (see schedule below)
- 5:00pm – Board shuttles in front of the Aerospace Building to head to the evening social event
- 5:30pm – Evening Social “Decompression” Event with Current Aerospace Students at Rayback Collective – meal tickets will be provided to each student for free dinner at any of the food trucks.
- You may leave the social event at any time after arriving, or stay after the 9pm shuttle departs.
- 7:30pm – Shuttle begins to take students back to the Homewood Suites
- 8:15 pm - second shuttle leaves from Rayback to return visitors to Homewood Suites
- 9:00 pm - last shuttle leaves from Rayback to return visitors to Homewood Suites
Saturday, February 18
Each group will receive an email with instructions for their event. Please let Graduate Program Manager, Nicole Simmons (nicole.m.simmons@colorado.edu) know if you have any questions about these events.
Activity options for Saturday:
- Denver: Indoor climbing at Movement from 10:00 am – Noon. Cost of entry, rental gear, and instruction are included.
- Denver: Visit Meow Wolf (10:00 am entry time). This is a 4-story immersive art exhibit in Denver. Check out the website to learn more!
- Boulder: Indoor soccer game at the CU Rec Center turf field from 10:00 am - Noon. This is a great opportunity to see main campus and Rec Center facilities, and interact with fellow visitors, current PhD students, and faculty over a friendly game.
- Boulder: Hiking in the Chautauqua Park/Flatirons area with current students and faculty.
Research Lab Open Houses
Faculty | Lab Name | Time | One-on-one Availability | Who Should Attend |
|---|---|---|---|---|
MBEAM Lab | 1:00 - 5:00 pm | Email directly to setup | Students interested in experimental molecular beam research with applications to hypersonics and to materials degradation and drag in low Earth orbit. | |
1-4 pm | 30min meetings from 1-4pm | Students interested in astrodynamics, spacecraft autonomy, space debris, charging in space, spacecraft simulation tools, formation flying, etc. | ||
2:00-3:00 pm | Individual meetings already pre-scheduled. | Students interested in GPS/GNSS and Software Defined Radios (both RF aspects and signal processing) and applications. Particularly where Position, Navigation, and Time (PNT) intersect with: (a) autonomous vehicles; (b) Android mobile apps; and (c) high integrity & robust applications (DoD, DHS, …) | ||
Opt Group | 1:00 - 3:00 PM | Please, contact Dr Maute for (virtual) meetings in the week of Feb. 20 | Students interested in continuum mechanics, multi-physics modeling and analysis, numerical simulations, design optimization | |
1:00-4:30 pm | Individual meetings already pre-scheduled. | Students interested in astrodynamics in multi-body systems, trajectory design, applications of dynamical systems theory and machine learning to astrodynamics problems. | ||
1-4 pm | 30 minutes meetings from 1-4 pm | Students interested in satellite navigation technologies in challenging environments and passive radio-based remote sensing technologies for space weather monitoring, atmospheric profiling, ocean and land surface properties measurement. | ||
1-5 pm | 1-3 pm for meetings in the aero building, 3-5 pm for IMPACT lab visits (10 min walk) | Students interested in working with cosmic dust detector and analyzer instruments on space missions, or supporting laboratory measurements using the unique dust accelerator facility. See more at impact.colorado.edu | ||
2-4:00 pm | Email directly for a meeting | Students interested in the intersection between astrodynamics, spacecraft autonomy, and planetary science. | ||
1-5 pm | Email me for zoom appointments Feb 22-24 | Students interested in the Space Environment, including the ionosphere, magnetosphere, and radiation belts, and interested in space instrumentation and satellite development | ||
AERO N424 | AERO 457 20-minute 1-on-1 meetings from 1-5pm | Students interested in Space Development, Space Domain Awareness, Space Expansion, Space Strategy, and Space Policy. The lab uses a ‘theory-to-hardware’ approach, with PhD students working on topics all the way from theorems and corollaries to software to empirical telescope images to hardware. | ||
STIg lab MAXWELL CubeSat | AERO 443 Lab | 2-5pm | Students interested in small satellites, RF remote sensing, radio frequency hardware, software defined radios, atmospheric remote sensing, ionospheric-mesospheric-thermospheric science, neutral atmosphere dynamics (waves and tides), building and deploying hardware | |
Students interested in the lidar instrumentation and technology breakthroughs, atmosphere and space science discoveries, photonics and spectroscopy principles and applications, as well as field work in Antarctica and other parts of the world. | ||||
4-5pm (TBD)
| 30-minute meetings in AERO 467 1-2 pm (filled) 3-4:30 pm (open) | Students interested in earth and space sciences, remote sensing of earth and space environments from space, and data science.
| ||
2-4 pm | 30-minute meetings available 2-4 pm AERO 417 | Students interested in navigation applications especially in space, GNSS algorithms, technology and applications, PNT (Position, navigation, and timing) systems, space applications of quantum sensing. (COMPASS: Clocks, orbits, multipath, positioning, astrodynamics, satellites, space domain awareness) | ||
Macdonald Lab | Email directly to set up a meeting | Students interested in computational hypersonics research, including topics related to gas phase chemistry and turbulence. | ||
Data-driven Modeling and Uncertainty Quantification Lab | Students interested in data-driven modeling, uncertainty quantification, machine learning, reduced order modeling, and their applications in computational solid and fluid mechanics | |||
4-5 pm | 30min meetings from 1-4pm | Students interested in the study and support of life in space. | ||
1-5 pm | On sabbatical, only available for pre-arranged on-line meetings. | Students interested in the study and application of space dynamics to enable exploration, solar system science and new mathematical approaches to understanding these systems. | ||
3-4:30 pm | Sunberg available 1-3pm for individual meetings. Email to set up Lahijanian available 1-2pm for 1-on-1 meetings | Students interested in dynamics, controls, and autonomy for aircraft and other systems. | ||
2-4 pm Open house | 30 min meetings from 1-5pm | Students interested in lightweight structures and composite materials | ||
CU Aerospace Nanoscale Transport Modelling (CUantam) Laboratory | 30-minute meetings from 1-4pm (AERO 357) | Students interested in designing materials for extreme environment microelectronics, hypersonics and quantum devices, using AI-driven computational modeling. | ||
1 - 3 PM | Email directly to setup | Students interested in experimental measurements in primarily low-speed, unsteady flows including combusting flows, gust interactions, dynamic stall, and active flow control. | ||
1 - 4 pm | 30 min meetings from 1-4 pm | Students interested in computational modeling of hypersonics and plasma propulsion for a variety of applications | ||
| I will be out of town. | I will be out of town. | Students interested in the computational modeling of fluids, structures, and fluid-structure interaction | |
Students interested in experimental hypersonics, magnetohydrodynamics, plasma physics, aerothermodynamics, space systems engineering | ||||
Mechanics of Complex Materials Lab | 1:30-2:30 pm | 1-on-1 meetings 1-2:30 and 4-5pm upon request. | Students interested in computational damage modeling of materials with emphasis on multi-physics problems, modeling of high-performance and additively manufactured composites, and machine learning. |
Things to do while you're here
Boulder Open Space and Mountain Parks has over 145 miles of trails and many other outdoor activities.
Eldora Mountain Resort has Nordic and Alpine skiing and snowboarding, and is only a 45 minute bus ride from downtown Boulder.
Pearl Street Mall and Downtown Boulder is popular destination for shopping and dining. The pedestrian mall has hundreds of businesses, most of which are local.
The Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art
The Dushanbe Tea House, the only structure of its kind in the Western Hemisphere. The stunning teahouse was given to the city of Boulder by its sister city of Dushanbe, Tajikistan as a symbol of U.S. and Soviet relations. Located in downtown Boulder; open daily for breakfast, lunch and dinner.