AEM Update
Department of Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics 2005-2006
WHAT'S INSIDE
Chairman's Corner
Academics: Where are we now?
Accreditation underway
Exit Survey Results
Advisory Board recommendations
Minnesat
Student experience
Reduced Gravity
Senior Design I
Senior Design II
Hypersonics Center update
MnSGC update
Research Focus
Research Focus
Adventures with the AIAA
Undergraduate Reception
Outstanding alumni honored:
Thomas Lundgren
Richard DeLeo
J. Michael Jordan
Professor Beavers retires
Faculty News
Faculty Research
Alumnus wins business award
Alumnus elected as honorary Fellow
Donation opportunities information
AEM looking to renovate
MnSGC awards
Scholarships and fellowships
Graduate and student awards list
Wife of former faculty member dies
AEM Home Page
Faculty News
Prof. Gary Balas and his Ph.D. student Dr. Tomas Keviczky were awarded 2006 American Automatic Control Council’s O. Hugo Schuck Award for Practice for the paper entitled, “Flight Test of a Receding Horizon Controller for Autonomous UAV Guidance.” presented at the 2005 Automatic Control Conference (ACC). This is a very prestigious award which will be given to Gary and Tomas at the 2006 ACC in June of this year in Minneapolis.
Professor Roger Fosdick was awarded a Laurea Specialistica Honoris Causa in Ingegneria Mecanica from the Politecnico di Bari, Italy. This is the highest Honorary Degree granted in the engineering profession in Italy and involved the approval of both the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Prof. Demoz Gebre-Egziabher was selected as one of the 2006-08 University McKnight Land-Grant Professors. He received his Ph.D. from Stanford University and his research interests center on the design and operation of miniature aerospace vehicles.
Prof. William Garrard was elected for a two year term as the Chair of the National Council of Space Grant Directors which represents 52 NASA Space Grant Consortia in the 50 states, Puerto Rico, and the District of Columbia. As Chair Garrard will be the primary point of contact between NASA Headquarters and the Space Grant Consortia.
Prof.William Garrard received the John Leland Atwood Award from the Aerospace Division of the American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE) and the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) “for the lasting influence of his recent contributions to aerospace engineering education.” Garrard received the award at the ASEE Meeting in Chicago in June, 2006. He will also be honored at the AIAA Aerospace Sciences Meeting in Reno in January of 2007.
Prof. Richard James received an Alexander von Humboldt Senior Research Award from the German government.
Prof. Richard James held the John von Neumann Visiting Chair, TU Munich, for two months this summer. He gave a course on “Lessons on Structure from the Structure of Viruses”, summarizing research he carried out earlier under the Russell J. Penrose Professorship. He gave a lecture series in Rome on related topics, two keynote lectures at US National Congress on Theoretical and Applied Mechanics in Boulder, and the “Crocco Colloquium” at Princeton. He was invited to give two popular lectures on his work: one for the Student Chapter of the Materials Research Society and the other for the Space Grant Executive Committee. For the latter he spoke on, “New Materials, Real and Imagined”.
A paper Prof. Longmire co-authored with Mubassar Ali and Susan Mantell of Mechanical Engineering, “Reliability of microcantilevers in liquid environments,” was awarded ‘Best Paper’ of 35 presented in the reliability category at SPIE MOEMS-MEMS Conference V in San Jose, California.
Prof. Emeritus Thomas Lundgren received the Outstanding Achievement Award from the University of Minnesota and was awarded the Fluid Dynamics Prize at the November APS meeting in Tampa Bay.
Prof. Yiyuan Zhao received the Best Instructor Award as the top professor in the Department from The Institute of Technology Student Board. The Student Body chose him for his commitment to the furthering of higher education and to promoting excellence in teaching at the University of Minnesota.