Rising Stars in Aerospace Attendees

Aastha Acharya

Aastha Acharya

Aastha Acharya is a Draper Scholar and a Ph.D. candidate in Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder. She received her B.Sc. and M.Eng. in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from Cornell University and worked as a Controls Engineer at Lockheed Martin Space prior to pursuing her doctoral degree. Her research interest lies in creating trustworthy deep learning based autonomy that can be safely and reliably deployed in the real...
Soumendu Bagchi

Soumendu Bagchi

Soumendu Bagchi is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Theoretical division of Physics and Chemistry of Materials (T-1) at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) working on novel scale-bridging atomistic simulations to study material behavior at the extremes. Before joining LANL in 2020, Soumendu received his PhD from the Department of Aerospace Engineering in University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) in the same year. At UIUC, he was the recipient of...
Akanksha Baranwal

Akanksha Baranwal

Akanksha Baranwal is a PhD candidate in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at Texas A&M University where she works under the supervision of Dr. Diego Donzis. The focus of her research is the study of non-equilibrium energy and momentum transport processes in high-speed turbulent boundary layers using massively parallel Direct Numerical Simulations. She holds Bachelor of Technology and Master of Technology degrees in Aerospace Engineering from the Indian Institute of...
Ricardo Costante Amores

Ricardo Costante Amores

Dr. Constante-Amores’ research aims to provide a fundamental understanding of turbulence and multiphase flows through numerical simulations and theory. He completed his Ph.D. in Fluid Mechanics at Imperial College London in Dic 2020. His research quality is demonstrated by an impressive collection of accolades and awards, such as the ERCOFTAC da Vinci Medal (2021), the Milton van Award from the American Physical Society (Division of Fluid Dynamics), the Osborne Reynolds...
Ofer Dagan

Ofer Dagan

Ofer Dagan is currently a 4th year PhD student in the Aerospace engineering sciences department at CU boulder. His research interests include theory and algorithms for decentralized Bayesian reasoning in heterogeneous autonomous systems. He received the B.S. degree in aerospace engineering, in 2010 (summa cum laude), and the M.S. degree in mechanical engineering, in 2015 (cum laude), from the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel. Prior to coming...
Rishita Das

Rishita Das

Rishita Das is a postdoctoral researcher in the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering department of New York University. She is working with Prof. Maurizio Porfiri in the Dynamical Systems Laboratory in the areas of complex systems, information theory, and data science. Rishita received her PhD in Aerospace Engineering from Texas A&M University, where she worked with Prof. Sharath Girimaji in turbulence theory and modeling. She holds Bachelor and Master’s degrees in...
Franck Djeumou

Franck Djeumou

I am currently a fourth-year Ph.D. student in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. Before my graduate studies in Austin, I received my Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Aerospace Engineering from ISAE-SUPAERO in France. My research interests lie in enabling artificial intelligence-powered autonomous systems to learn and reason like humans do, i.e., safely learn complex and uncorrelated skills through incredibly small amounts...
Giusy Falcone

Giusy Falcone

Giusy Falcone is a Ph.D. graduate in the Aerospace Engineering Department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and she works in the Putnam Research Group under the guidance of Prof. Zachary R. Putnam. She will join the Robotic Exploration Lab in The Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University as Postdoctoral Fellow in June 2022, under the direction of Prof. Zachary Manchester. Her expertise lies in hypersonic and space systems;...
Roya Firoozi

Roya Firoozi

Roya is currently a postdoctoral researcher in the Aeronautics and Astronautics department at Stanford University, Multi-Robot Systems Laboratory. She received bachelor's and Ph.D. degrees in mechanical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley. Her current research interests include predictive control, perception, optimization, and learning. Her work on predictive and collaborative robotics incorporates communication and connectivity technologies in autonomous systems to enable efficient and safe planning, control, estimation, and fault diagnostic...
Pamela Flores

Pamela Flores

Pamela Flores obtained a B.S. in Biochemistry and Microbiology from Universidad del Valle de Guatemala (UVG) in 2017. Worked at the Center for Biotechnology Studies (CEB-UVG) and at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC, Atlanta, GA), silencing mosquito genes to control Malaria transmission in rural areas of Guatemala. She worked with biologically compatible nanoparticles at Institut des Sciences Moléculaires d'Orsay (ISMO), Paris, France. Currently, she is a Ph.D...
Dasha Gloutak

Dasha Gloutak

Dasha Gloutak is a Ph.D. candidate in Aerospace Engineering Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder, where she researches the aerodynamic performance of finite-span wings in streamwise gusts. Dasha received her M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Cornell University in 2018 studying compressibility effects on turbulent energy spectra in the Variable Density and Speed of Sound Vessel (VDSSV). Prior, she designed and tested inertial measurement units and navigation systems as a...
Damennick Henry

Damennick Henry

Damennick Henry is a CU Boulder Smead Scholar and is advised by Prof. Dan Scheeres. Damennick graduated Summa Cum Laude from the University of Minnesota in May 2018 with a BS in Electrical Engineering. Damennick's research is also supported by a NASA Space Technology Research Fellowship, first awarded in 2019. Originally from Beavercreek, OH, Damennick is interested in studying controls and astrodynamics to provide solutions to problems such as formation...
Sarah Li

Sarah Li

Sarah H.Q. Li is a Ph.D. candidate in the Aeronautics and Astronautics Engineering department at the University of Washington, Autonomous Control Laboratory. She received her BASc in Engineering Physics from the University of British Columbia. Inspired by large-scale autonomy such as autonomous driving and urban air mobility, her research combines game theory, optimization, and learning to design safe and minimally congested networks of non-cooperative autonomous agents. She is a 2020...
Neelakshi Majumdar

Neelakshi Majumdar

Neelakshi is a Ph.D. candidate in the School of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Purdue University. Her research involves modeling General Aviation accidents involving fixed-wing aircraft. As part of her research, she focuses on investigating causes and human factors that lead to inflight loss of control accidents. She received her undergraduate degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering from India. After working as a Programmer Analyst at Cognizant for two years, she came...
Madeline Peck

Madeline Peck

Madeline Peck is a Ph.D. student at Texas A&M University working with Helen Reed. She received her Bachelor's degree in 2018 and Master's degree in 2019, both from Texas A&M. Her research interests are in boundary-layer stability and transition spanning from the incompressible regime to hypersonic speeds. Currently, Madeline is studying linear instability mechanisms present on three-dimensional hypersonic geometries.
Victoria Preston

Victoria Preston

Victoria Preston is a roboticist and graduate researcher developing embodied intelligence tools that tackle outstanding challenges in expeditionary sciences, such as uncovering complicated dynamical relationships in partially-observable spatiotemporal systems, and embedding scientific intuition in adaptive robotic behaviors. Alongside her advisors Prof. Nicholas Roy and Dr. Anna Michel at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), respectively, Victoria has developed and deployed sampling strategies for flying, sailing,...
Sarasija Sudharsan

Sarasija Sudharsan

Sarasija is a Ph.D. candidate in Aerospace Engineering at Iowa State University, working on fluid mechanics research spanning the areas of unsteady aerodynamics, boundary layers, and vortex-dominated flows. She received her Master's degree in Aerospace Engineering from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. In the interim, she worked as an engineer in the Turbine Aerodynamics team at GE Aviation, where her contributions to an innovative turbine rear frame design led...
Sara Swenson

Sara Swenson

Sara Swenson is a fifth year Ph.D. candidate in Aerospace Engineering Sciences at University of Colorado Boulder. Her research involves coupling radiation transport modeling with computational fluid dynamics modeling in order to explore radiative signatures and energy transfer from aircraft and spacecraft traveling at hypersonic speeds. In her time as a PhD student at the University of Colorado, Sara has also conducted research in support of the severe storm targeting...
Rich Whittle

Rich Whittle

Rich Whittle is a Ph.D. Candidate in Aerospace Engineering at Texas A&M University, working in the Bioastronautics and Human Performance Laboratory under Prof. Ana Diaz Artiles. His dissertation is titled “Quantifying the effects of altered-gravity and spaceflight countermeasures on acute cardiovascular and ocular hemodynamics”. Rich’s research interests focus on understanding and characterizing physiological changes in altered-gravity environments, in particular changes in the cardiovascular system during spaceflight, the effect of countermeasures,...

Rising Stars in Aerospace Faculty

Allie Anderson

Allie Anderson

Assistant Professor
BioServe Space Technologies
Brian Argrow

Brian Argrow

Distinguished Professor • Glenn Murphy Endowed Chair • Director of IRISS • National Academy Member
Research and Engineering Center for Unmanned Vehicles (RECUV)
Penina Axelrad

Penina Axelrad

University of Colorado Distinguished Professor • Joseph T. Negler Professor • National Academy Member
Colorado Center for Astrodynamics Research (CCAR)
Natasha Bosanac

Natasha Bosanac

Assistant Professor
Colorado Center for Astrodynamics Research (CCAR)
James Brasseur

James Brasseur

Research Professor
Aerospace Mechanics Research Center (AMReC)
Dave Darmofal

David Darmofal

Jerome C. Hunsaker Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT
David Darmofal is the Jerome C. Hunsaker Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT and a member of the MIT Aerospace Computational Design Laboratory (ACDL) and the MIT Center for Computational Science & Engineering (CCSE). His principal areas of interest are computational methods for partial differential equations, especially fluid dynamics; and engineering education innovation. In recognition of excellence in teaching and advising, he was honored with the MIT School of...
Alireza Doostan

Alireza Doostan

Professor
Aerospace Mechanics Research Center (AMReC)
Hanspeter Schaub

Hanspeter Schaub

Department Chair • Professor • Schaden Leadership Chair • Glenn Murphy Endowed Chair
Colorado Center for Astrodynamics Research (CCAR)