Aerospace Sweeps AIAA Region 1-MA Student Conference

Twenty-five undergraduate and graduate students from the Dept. of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Maryland (UMD) competed in the AIAA Region 1-MA (Mid-Atlantic) Student Conference held on April 13-14, 2012, at Penn State University in State College, PA. Five additional universities were represented at the student conference including Old Dominion University, Penn State University, Virginia Tech, University of Virginia, and Drexel University. Forty-five students presented their research to a panel of judges from industry that selected First, Second and Third Place in four categories: Masters, Undergraduate, Team, and Outreach. All winners were awarded certificates and cash prizes from AIAA for their efforts.

Congratulations to the University of Maryland students who were recipients of awards as below:

Masters Category:

* First Place – Ms. Erica Hocking: Fabrication and Characterization

of Small-scale Pneumatic Artificial Muscles for a Bio-Inspired

Robotic Hand (Advisor. Prof. N.M. Wereley)

* Second Place – Ms. Pauline Parent: Preliminary Study of Moment

and Tip-Load Trained Shape Memory Alloys (Advisor: Prof. A.B.

Flatau)

Undergraduate Category:

* First Place – Ms. Elena Shrestha: Autonomous Hover Capability of

a Cycloidal Rotor Micro Air Vehicle (Advisors: Dr. M. Benedict

and Prof. I. Chopra)

* Second Place – Mr. Harrison Chau: Study of a Two-Phase Dusty

Wall-Jet Flow. (Advisor: Prof. Gordon J. Leishman)

* Third Place – Mr. Gino Perrotta: Interaction of Vertical Axis

Wind Turbine Pair (Advisor: Prof. A. Jones)

Undergraduate Team Category:

* Second Place – Mr. William J. Ouyang: Feedback Control Applied to

Multi-Vehicle Cooperative Leaf Collecting (Advisor: Prof. D.

Paley)

The AIAA Region 1-MA Student Conference will here at the University of Maryland College Park next year, April 5-6, 2013. Please mark your calendars!

Published May 1, 2012