1/22/2026 Debra Levey Larson
The Department of Aerospace Engineering was well represented last week at AIAA’s annual Scitech Forum in Orlando, Florida. In addition to accepting awards, faculty and their students chairing sessions and giving numerous talks, the department hosted a gathering for faculty, students and alumni as well as a booth in the exhibit hall.
Written by Debra Levey Larson
The Department of Aerospace Engineering was well represented last week at AIAA’s annual Scitech Forum in Orlando, Florida. In addition to accepting awards, faculty and their students chairing sessions and giving numerous talks, the department hosted a gathering for faculty, students and alumni as well as a booth in the exhibit hall.
Below is a partial list of faculty and students who participated at the week-long event.
Phil Ansell served as the chair of the Sustainability Integration and Outreach Committee.
One of Ansell’s recent PhD graduates, Matt Laur, presented his research paper “Parametric Flow Analysis of a Curvature-Continuous Aeropropulsive Wing.”
Several of his current students also gave talks.
Tyler Gralewski and Rohit Gupta presented the “Life Cycle Analysis of Power-to-X Aviation Fuels.”
Marty Bathgate presented a paper on “Airfoil Decambering for Gust Load Alleviation Using a Bi-stable Hinge.”
Abigail Kennedy presented “Technoeconomic and Energy Life Cycle Assessments of Wind Energy Systems for Regional Hybrid Electric Aircraft.”
Chaitanya Ongole presented “Non-Uniform Rational B-Spline Parameterization for Aerodynamic Shape Optimization.”
Elias Waddington presented “A Theoretical Foundation, Methodology, and Framework for Aircraft Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment,” gave an oral-only presentation on an upcoming journal paper, and co-chaired a session on Aviation Operations for Sustainability.
Jeff Baur’s student, Zheyuan Zheng, presented “Mechanical, Thermal, and Chemical Design of The Mission ‘Illinois’ On-Orbit Fabricator of Composite Longerons” to a standing-room-only crowd.
Daniel Bodony ran a discussion group of about 40 people from academia, industry and government on high-speed fluid-structure interaction on behalf of the Fluid Dynamics Technical Committee.
Bodony’s student, Jay Woo, presented research on “Modeling and Validation of Tongue-Induced Unsteady Loading in Turbocharger Radial Turbine Using a 1D Approach With 3D LES.”
Matthew Clarke chaired a session on electric aircraft design and his students presented research papers.
Matteo Guidotti, presented research on “Challenges of Retrofitting Existing Aircraft With Next-Generation Powertrains.”
Sai Shekar, presented research on “Stability-Driven Preliminary Blended Wing Body Design With Foresight for Hydrogen Fuel Adoption.”
Aidan Molloy, presented research on “Electric Aircraft Handling Qualities: Why Battery Positioning Matters.”
Siegfried Eggl chaired a session on The New Space Race: Chances and Challenges for a Sustainable Future. The four panelists represented government, industry and academia. Eggl said although all the panelists recognize we are rapidly approaching a state of hazardous congestion in Low Earth Orbit, they expressed differing views on how to solve the issue.
Sean Kearney co-chaired a session on coherent laser diagnostics.
Deborah Levin co-chaired a session on instability and transition X, accepted her 2025 AIAA Thermophysics award and gave the Invited AIAA Thermophysics Award Lecture entitled, “New Thermo-physical Insights into Complex, High- speed Flows from Particle Kinetic Formulations.”
Several of Levin’s students presented their research:
Gyuha Lim presented “Hybrid DSMC and PIC-MCC Method with Spatially Varying Pressure for Electric Propulsion Ground Testing.”
Shubham Thirani’s talk was entitled, “Modeling Laser Absorption Measurements in a Shock Tube using the Photon Monte Carlo Method.”
Irmak Taylan Karpuzcu presented “Kinetic Linear Stability Theory Analysis of Canonical High Speed Flows.”
Mert Senkardesler presented “DSMC Study on Unsteadiness of Supersonic Flow Over a Cylinder.”
Jason Merret moderated a panel entitled, “Command Your Mission: Leveraging Your Competition Experiences,” chaired a session on the design of uninhabited aerial vehicles and assisted with the drone basketball game in the exhibit hall.
Merret’s student, Ashwin Muthuparambil Ramachandran, presented “Integration of Natural Language Processing and Large Language Models for Automated SysML Generation with Topological Robustness Benchmarking in MBSE.”
Xin Ning co-chaired a session on adaptive space structures and two of his students presented.
Yao Yao presented, “Development and Characterization of a Combined Low-Earth Orbit Environment Simulation Facility for Space Materials and Structures Research and Education.”
Chole Zarader presented, “Thermo-Elastic Behavior of Pristine and Degraded Bistable Ultrathin Composite Booms in Low-Earth Orbits.”
Francesco Panerai co-chaired a session on nonequilibrium flow physics and his visiting student, Domenico Lanza, presented a paper entitled, “BLAST: Boundary Layer Analysis & Simulation Toolbox for Chemically Reacting Flows.”
Joshua Rovey gave four technical talks during the week at Scitech:
“Spectral Evolution of an Inertial Electrostatic Confinement Discharge with Pressure and Voltage.”
“Exploration of an In-Situ Hall Thruster Erosion and Plasma Diagnostic Senso.r”
“Total and Differential Sputtering Properties of Disordered Carbons.”
“Collisional Carbon Transport Measurements Taken in Close Proximity of a 600 W Hall Thruster.”
Theresa Saxton-Fox’ student, Nissrine Aziz, presented “Flow Characterization over a Modified Boeing Bump.”