We mourn the passing of Professor Kuen Y. Lin on January 19, 2017. Professor Lin served on the A&A faculty for 33 years as a dedicated professor, mentor and colleague. After receiving his bachelor’s degree from National Taiwan University and master’s and doctoral degrees in Aeronautics and Astronautics from MIT, Professor Lin spent six years in industry, working for Deere & Co. and The Boeing Company. Professor Lin was an expert in the areas of composite materials, finite element methods, and fracture mechanics, and co-creator of the Mar-Lin Fracture Model, which is used by the aerospace industry for the damage tolerant design of composite aircraft structures. He also developed a singular hybrid finite element method for the accurate analysis of bi-material fracture problems. His recent research efforts have direct applications to the critical technologies needed in developing the next generation of aerospace vehicles.
News
Congratulations to alumna Suzanna Darcy-Hennemann (BS '81) who has received the UW College of Engineering Diamond Award for Distinguished Achievement in Industry. In addition to being a record-breaking chief pilot and director of flight training for Boeing, Suzanna was the first woman to serve as a Boeing test pilot, and the first female captain of the 747-400 and 777. We are proud of her accomplishments and of this well-deserved recognition.
Last year, Mia Lee (BS '16) received the first place award in the undergraduate category at the 2016 AIAA Region VI Student Conference for her paper titled, "Tunable Bistability of Origami-based Mechanical Metamaterials." Mia was supervised by Prof. JK Yang and mentored by Hiromi Yasuda. As an award winner, Mia was invited to participate in this year's AIAA SciTech international student competition and she again won first place, triumphing over all of the other regional conference winners.
Recent A&A graduate Aditi Bhide (MS ‘16) is a part of a UW team of only 30 world-wide finalists selected to compete in a SpaceX sponsored challenge to design and fabricate a Hyperloop pod. Last year, the UW team won the Safety Subsystem Technical Excellence Award and will test their pod at SpaceX this month.
Emilio Beltran ('99) discusses his experiences attending UW A&A, diversity programs, and the establishment of his Beltran Endowed Fund for Undergraduate Student Support.
Congratulations to UW A&A doctoral student Gustavo Eidji Camarinha Fujiwara, who has been awarded a UW Graduate School Latino/a Scholars Graduate School Fellowship (LSGSF) for the 2016-17 academic year. Gustavo has been recognized for his academic research, and for service that demonstrates his strong commitment to Latino/a communities.
Recently highlighted in the December issue of the AIAA Aerospace America 2016 Year in Review was work being done on the Rotating Detonation Engine (RDE) or Pressure Gain Combustor (PGC) by Professors Mitsuru Kurosaka and Carl Knowlen and their students.
On sabbatical this year, Professor and Associate Chair for Academics, Kristi Morgansen is working at Blue Origin on Guidance, Navigation and Control for their autonomous rocket systems.
In an article on Peter Thiels's interest in nuclear fusion, Professor Tom Jarboe is quoted on the funding needs of making the energy source commercially viable.
UW engineering students Katherine Chun and Yoel Tekle discuss their student experiences and the impact donors make on their education.
A&A Ph.D. candidate Michael Dodd and Professor Antonino Ferrante (principal investigator of the Computational Fluid Mechanicsgroup) are unraveling the complex physical mechanisms of droplet-turbulence interaction. The results of their research have been published in the Journal of Fluid Mechanics (Dodd & Ferrante, Vol. 806, pp. 356-412, J. Fluid Mechanics (2016)) in an article titled, “On the interaction of Taylor length scale size droplets and isotropic turbulence.”
The University of Washington on Friday is launching the public phase of its most ambitious philanthropic campaign in history, with a goal of raising $5 billion by the year 2020. The campaign, called “Be Boundless — For Washington, For the World,” focuses on four key priorities: transforming the student experience, expanding the impact of the UW’s research, empowering possibility through innovation, and driving the public good. The earliest phases of the campaign began in 2010, and the UW has already received more than $3 billion toward its goal.
A&A Professor and Chair Anthony Waas has just been named the recipient of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) and the American Society for Composites (ASC), James H. Starnes, Jr. Award for 2017. Professor Waas is receiving this award for his impactful contributions to experimental, analytical and computational aspects of composite structural mechanics, his commitment to mentoring the next generation, and his service to the field.
The Masters of Aerospace Engineering (MAE) Composites concentration curriculum has recently been updated to include two Aerospace Composite Design classes.
Professor Behçet Açıkmeşe won the 2016 Asian Journal of Control Best Paper Award. The paper, titled, “Markov Chain Approach to Probabilistic Guidance for Swarms of Autonomous Agents,” was co-authored with senior research scientist David Bayard of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
AA Professor Adam Bruckner commented on the successful Blue Origin New Shepard rocket in-flight escape test.
Professor Anshu Narang-Siddarth is the new Chair Elect of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Technical Committee on Guidance, Navigation & Control.
In an effort to help make UAS more visible to aviation stakeholders, the Autonomous Flight Systems Laboratory launched a collaborative project with industry partners to test how UAS interact with manned aircraft.
This fall, Professors Dana Dabiri and Robert Yancey were both distinguished by their notable contributions to the aerospace community and honored with the title of AIAA Associate Technical Fellow. This is a distinction that only one out of 150 voting members earn through peer nomination and a rigorous selection and approval process each year.
A&A Alumnus Robert Hoyt's Tethers Unlimited has secured a contract to prepare an Earth orbit test of its technology for robotic, in-space manufacturing of satellite components.
BlackSky, a company owned by A&A Alum Jason Andrews (1994), has launched its first satellite in a planned 60 satellite constellation designed to allow anyone to order low-cost, custom satellite photos.
Professor Adam Bruckner comments on the scientific feasibility of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy's Improbability Drive and Rick and Morty's Portal Guns.
Chair Tony Waas will be moderating the panel discussion on Additive Manufacturing at the Washington Aerospace Futures Alliance 11th Annual Governor’s Aerospace Summit.
In 2016, Prof. James C. Hermanson was awarded a prestigious Fulbright Fellowship to collaborate with the Center of Applied Space Technology and Microgravity at the University of Bremen in Germany (ZARM). Each summer, Hermanson travels to Germany to work in concert with the Combustion Technology group headed by Christian Eigenbrod on a new DLR-funded project to study the combustion of single oxygen droplets in a hydrogen environment.