3/13/2025 Debra Levey Larson
Written by Debra Levey Larson
In 2015, when Robyn Woollands was a Ph.D. student at Texas A&M University, she received the prestigious John V. Breakwell Best Student Paper Award. Ten years later, she is proud to see one of her own students receive the same honor.
Ruthvik Bommena, Woollands’ Ph.D. student in the Department of Aerospace Engineering in The Grainger College of Engineering, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign accepted the award at the 2025 AAS/AIAA Space Flight Mechanics Meeting in Kauai, Hawaii.
Bommena’s winning paper is titled "Path-Constrained Optimal 6-DOF Motion for Multi-Agent In-space Servicing and Assembly." It builds on earlier work that was recently published in The Journal of the Astronautical Sciences. A story about that earlier paper on creating reliable trajectories for CubeSats on an in-space servicing mission is on the aerospace engineering website.
About the Breakwell award, Woollands said, “It’s a prestigious and competitive award. Many of the awardees have gone on to achieve great things in industry or have become professors. Receiving the award is an honor and testament to the quality of work our students are doing here at Illinois.”
Bommena joined Woollands’ group in the second year of his master’s program. He completed his master’s degree in aerospace engineering in 2023 and recently passed his PhD preliminary exam. Bommena expects to earn his Ph.D. sometime next year. He already has an impressive list of accomplishments, including having presented his research at four conferences.
Yet another milestone? Bommena said he is proud to have earned a private pilot license from the Institute of Aviation at Parkland College in 2023.