December 3, 2009 – Reston, Virginia – The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) will present a number of prestigious awards during the 48th Aerospace Sciences Meeting and Exposition, January 4, 2010, at the Orlando World Center Marriott, in Orlando, Fla. The recipients will be honored in a public ceremony hosted by AIAA President David Thompson on January 5. The awards being conferred include the following:
- The 2010 Faculty Advisor Award will be presented to W. Jerry Bowman, Founders Teaching Professor, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, "for enthusiastically educating engineering students in the classroom, with extraordinary projects, and at competitions and conferences, thus encouraging, motivating and preparing students to be successful aerospace engineers."
- The 2010 Lawrence Sperry Award will be presented to Mitchell Walker, assistant professor, Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Ga., "for technology advances in the field of electric propulsion and contributions to aerospace education."
- The 2010 Losey Atmospheric Sciences Award will be presented to Jeffrey Forbes, Glenn Murphy Endowed Chair, professor, and department chair, Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colo., "for extensive contributions to our knowledge and understanding of the re-entry, aerobraking and orbital drag environments of the Earth, Mars and Venus."
- The 2010 Pendray Aerospace Literature Award will be presented to Moshe Matalon, College of Engineering Caterpillar Professor, Department of Mechanical Science Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, for "outstanding contributions to aerospace literature, most notably seminal papers in the area of reacting flows."
- The 2010 James A. Van Allen Space Environments Award will be presented to Daniel N. Baker, professor and director of the Laboratory of Atmospheric and Space Physics, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colo., "for excellence and leadership in space research, particularly in the study of the magnetosphere and its consequences for radiation effects on earth orbiting satellites."
- The 2009 AIAA Foundation Orville and Wilbur Wright Graduate Awards will be presented to the following graduate students who are participating in research endeavors as a part of their engineering/science graduate studies: Daniel Grebow, Purdue University; Jacqueline O'Connor, Georgia Institute of Technology; Jason Roadman, University of Colorado-Boulder; and David Wiese, University of Colorado-Boulder.
- The 2009 Willy Z. Sadeh Graduate Student Award in Space Engineering and Space Sciences will be presented to Carl Seubert, University of Colorado-Boulder.
- The 2009 Abe M. Zarem Award for Distinguished Achievement will be presented to two graduate students: Richard Callahan of Cornell University for his work in aeronautics, and Adam Cowling of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University for his work in astronautics.
- The 2009 Abe M. Zarem Educator Award will be presented to Ephrahim Garcia of Cornell University and Jeffrey Robinson of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University to recognize their mentorship and guidance to the Abe M. Zarem Award for Distinguished Achievement recipients.
- The 2009 AIAA Section Awards will be presented to section officers who were selected as first place winners for their work in overall section activities and in such areas as membership, pre-college outreach, public policy, and communications, during the recently-concluded section year.
In addition, the 2010 AIAA Associate Fellows will be honored in a special evening ceremony on January 4. AIAA Associate Fellows are members who have accomplished important engineering or scientific work; have done original work of outstanding merit; or who have made outstanding contributions to the arts, sciences or technology of aeronautics or astronautics.
For more information about the AIAA Honors and Awards program, please contact Carol Stewart at carols@aiaa.org or 703.264.7623. For more information on the 48th AIAA Aerospace Sciences Meeting and Exposition, please contact Duane Hyland at 703.264.7558 or duaneh@aiaa.org. Registration for the conference is free 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.