News Release

AIAA to present awards at 45th Joint Propulsion Conference and 7th International Energy Conversion Engineering Conference

Grant and Award Announcement

American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics

July 13, 2009 – Reston, Va. – The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) will present the following awards at an awards luncheon at noon on August 5 as part of the AIAA/ASME/SAE/ASEE Joint Propulsion Conference and the 7th International Energy Conversion Engineering Conference which are being held at Denver's Colorado Convention Center, August 2-5.

William Sirignano, Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and the Henry Samueli Endowed Chair in Engineering, University of California, Irvine, will receive the 2009 AIAA Wyld Propulsion Award. The award honors outstanding achievement in the development or application of rocket propulsion systems. Sirignano is being recognized for extensive and fundamental contributions to the advancement of chemical rocket propulsion through theories of nonsteady combustion and fluid dynamics.

Vigor Yang, William R. T. Oakes Professor and chair, Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Ga., will receive the 2009 AIAA Propellants and Combustion Award. The award honors outstanding contributions to the study of unsteady combustion in chemical propulsion systems including solid-and liquid-propellant rockets, hybrid rockets, ramjet/scramjet engines, gas-turbine engines, pulse detonation engines, and solid-and liquid-propellant guns. Yang is being recognized for his outstanding career-spanning contributions to the development of numerical techniques and their application to elucidate a variety of problems in combustion science.

Stan Powell, engineering specialist, Aerospace Alliance Testing, Arnold Air Force Base, Tennessee, will receive the 2009 AIAA Ground Testing Award. The award honors outstanding achievement in the development or effective utilization of technology, procedures, facilities, or modeling techniques for flight simulation, space simulation, propulsion testing, aerodynamic testing, or other ground testing associated with aeronautics and astronautics. Powell is being recognized for his original research an ability to bring together the computational and experimental which have served the ground test community for over twenty-five years.

Frederick Schauer, senior research engineer at the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, will receive the 2009 AIAA Engineer of the Year Award. The award honors a member of AIAA who has made a recent, within the past two years, individual contribution in the application of scientific and mathematical principles leading to a significant accomplishment or event worthy of AIAA's national or international recognition. Shauer is being recognized for contributions to developing the next generation of power for future flight vehicles, specifically for a recent flight test of a pulsed detonation engine.

AIAA Sustained Service Awards will be presented to three AIAA members for their dedicated service: David McGrath, chief engineer at ATK in Elkton, Md.; Suresh Aggarwal, professor, Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at the University of Illinois at Chicago; and Cynthia Obringer, thermal management group lead in the Energy, Power and Thermal Division at the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio.

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For more information on the on the AIAA Honors and Awards program, please contact Carol Stewart at 703.264.7623 or carols@aiaa.org. For more information on the 45th AIAA/ASME/SAE/ASEE Joint Propulsion Conference, or the 7th International Energy Conversion Engineering Conference, please contact Duane Hyland at 703.264.7558 or duaneh@aiaa.org. Conference registration is complimentary for credentialed members of the press.

AIAA is the world's largest technical society dedicated to the global aerospace profession. With more than 35,000 individual members worldwide, and 90 corporate members, AIAA brings together industry, academia, and government to advance engineering and science in aviation, space, and defense. For more information, visit www.aiaa.org.

American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics
1801 Alexander Bell Drive, Suite 500, Reston, VA 20191-4344
Phone: 703.264.7558 Fax: 703.264.7551 www.aiaa.org


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