Twenty-seven students and faculty were honored for their accomplishments in aeronautics and astronautics over the past year at the department's senior recognition dinner on May 8. David E. Thompson (SB 1977), chair and CEO of Orbital Sciences Corp., was the guest speaker. He also gave a lecture that day on "Commercial Space Applications: The Next 10 Years."
The student chapter of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) presented the department's undergraduate teaching award to Professor Daniel Frey. Professor S. Mark Spearing again received the chapter's departmental advising award. Professor Earll Murman was awarded the Sigma Tau Society's graduate teaching award.
The Yngve Raustein Award was presented to Ayanna T. Samuels, a sophomore from Kingston, Jamaica, as the student that best exemplified the spirit of Yngve K. Raustein by her scholarship, team work and community building within and beyond MIT.
The Unified Engineering Award was presented to graduate teaching assistants Torrey O. Radcliffe of Cambridge and Marcos (Erik) Carreno of Tulsa, OK, for outstanding service and creativity in advancing the educational objectives of Unified Engineering during 1999-2000.
The Apollo Program Prize, awarded to an aero/astro student who conducts the best undergraduate research project on the topic of humans in space, was presented to Dana M. Forti, a junior from Tynsboro, MA, for research and outreach on the tactile feedback parabolic flight experiments.
The David J. Shapiro Memorial Award for designing, building and flying a high-speed electric-powered model aircraft in the 2000-01 AIAA/Cessna/ONR Student Competition was given to an eight-student team: graduate students Larry Baskett of Pleasanton, CA and Carol C. Cheung of Woodbury, MN; seniors Allen Chen of Newtown, PA andJacob Markish of Chelmsford, MA; juniors Bernard F. Ahyow of Irvine, CA and Lawrence O. Pilkington of Hyannis, NE; and freshmen Daniel J. Benhammou of Colorado Springs, CO and Adam J. Diedrich of Petoskey, MI.
The Thomas B. Sheridan Prize For Creativity in the Improvement of Human-Machine Integration or Cooperation was presented to Katherine H. Zimmerman, a senior from Sandy Hook, CT, and Kamla A. Topsey, a senior from Brooklyn, NY in recognition of their development and testing of a naturalistic driver interface for an automoblile GPS guidance system.
The Leaders for Manufacturing Prize was awarded to David E. Carpenter, a senior from Tyler, TX, for his design of the SPHERES structure in the "Conceive, Design, Implement and Operate" Capstone course. The James Means Memorial Award for Excellence in Flight Vehicle or Space Systems Engineering was presented to Allen Chen, a senior from Newtown, PA, for his contributions to that course.
The James Means Memorial Award for Excellence in Space Systems Engineering was presented to Sumita Pennathur, a graduate student from Foxborough, MA, for initiative, leadership and accomplishments on the Mission PreMISS project (Precipitation Measuring Instrument for a Space System). The James Means Memorial Award for Excellence in Flight Vehicle Engineering was presented to Jacob Markish for technical excellence in the design, development and analysis of a high-capacity long-range cargo aircraft.
Pratt and Whitney Awards for outstanding achievement in the design, construction, execution and reporting of an undergraduate experimental project were presented to seniors Brian D. McElwain of Phoenix, AZ and Erin F. Noonan of University City, MO, for characterizing the buckling response of pressurized fuel tanks for micro launch vehicles, and to Paul Eremenko, a junior from W. Lafayette, IN, for characterizing the performance and design of the inner-loop control for an unmanned air vehicle.
The Admiral Luis De Florez Award for Original Thinking or Ingenuity was presented to seniors Christopher Gouldstone of Herefordshire, England and Ryan E. Peoples of Medford, NJ for a novel testing methodology for fracture testing of composite materials in cryogenic environments.
The Henry Webb Salisbury Award, established by the family and friends of Henry Salisbury, was presented to Jacob Markish for outstanding work in completing the aero/astro undergraduate degree program.
A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on May 31, 2000.
