5/7/2025 Debra Levey Larson
Written by Debra Levey Larson
This year, the Department of Aerospace Engineering selected Robyn Macdonald to receive the Outstanding Recent Alumni award. She is currently an assistant professor in Aerospace Engineering Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder.
Macdonald received a bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Illinois in 2013, then stayed to complete her education. With Professor Marco Panesi as her advisor, Macdonald earned her doctorate in 2019. She spent two years at the University of Minnesota as a postdoctoral associate in aerospace engineering and mechanics, then joined the faculty at CU Boulder as an assistant professor.
At CU Boulder, Macdonald develops models for the analysis of hypersonic flow. She teaches methodologies for the prediction of aerodynamics forces and moments experienced by aircraft and the fundamental understanding of gas dynamics in nozzles with application to aircraft and rocket propulsion.
"Robyn has made an enormous impact in her first few years here at CU Boulder in both research and teaching,” said Iain Boyd, professor of aerospace engineering sciences at the University of Colorado. “In research, she really hit the ground running by winning a Young Investigator Program award from the Air Force on hypersonics.”
The Air Force Young Investigator program aims to foster basic research in challenging science and engineering areas and enhance career development for outstanding individuals. AFOSR received over 175 proposals that year. Macdonald’s is one of 36 awarded.
“She is also supporting two large projects that I am leading. In the first, a NASA-funded institute on heat shield reliability, Robyn is significantly advancing our understanding of how turbulence affects entry vehicle heating. Several University of Illinois faculty are also involved in this project. In the second, a multidisciplinary university project funded by the Navy, Robyn is developing advanced models of complex air plasma chemistry. In the classroom, Robyn is also playing a critical role by teaching key required classes at both the undergraduate and graduate levels."
Visit, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-gPrvkmXyw for a short video about Macdonald’s lab at Boulder.
During her years at Illinois as a doctoral candidate, Macdonald received the Illinois Space Grant Fellowship, participated in The Grainger College of Engineering Mavis Future Faculty Fellows program, and received the Faculty Outstanding Graduate Student Award.
She was also honored with the Weaver Thermophysics Best Student Paper Award at the AIAA Aviation Forum. The paper was also Editor’s Choice from The Journal of Chemical Physics.