AeroAstro Annual 4

Dear colleagues and friends: Welcome to Aero-Astro, the MIT Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics' annual report about the people, research, and educational activities in our community. While we on campus continually witness the Department’s advancements in research and learning, reviewing the submissions to this publication impresses us each time we do it.

In this issue you will read about a combined Cambridge University-MIT project to develop the conceptual design of a “silent aircraft,” groundbreaking research in autonomous unmanned aerial vehicle operation, application of conceive-design-implement-operate hands-on learning in Aero-Astro courses, and about some wonderful volunteer and engineering work three of our students are doing to improve the lives of others.

You will also see profiles of alumnus Brad Parkinson, a recipient of the National Academy of Engineering’s Draper Prize (sometimes referred to as the Nobel Prize for Engineering), and Professor of the Practice Bob Liebeck, who is manager of Boeing Phantom Works Blended Wing Body aircraft project and a Boeing Technical Fellow.

A brief look of some of the other happenings in the Department over the past year: • Three outstanding junior faculty members joined the Department.

Hamsa Balakrishnan, who comes to us from Stanford via NASA Ames, specializes in air traffic control, traffic flow management, airport operations scheduling, and hybrid systems. Emilio Frazzoli, who gained his Ph.D. at MIT, and has been an assistant professor at UCLA, has expertise in aerospace control systems, autonomous air/space/ground vehicles, mobile robotics, systems and control theory, optimization algorithms, real-time and embedded systems. Paulo Lozano, the Charles Stark Draper Assistant Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics, an MIT Ph.D. and a former research scientist with this department, has interests in electric propulsion, electrosprays, thruster physics, electrochemical microfabrication, engine health monitoring, and space mission design.