A team of five engineering students won this year’s FAA Smart Connected Aviation student competition by demonstrating how a successful air taxi service will need to manage their electricity needs. Four of the team members are AAE students, including team lead and master’s student Nick Gunady (pictured).

The team showed how urban air mobility (UAM) operators could balance on-site renewable energy with the electricity grid to charge their vehicles. They developed sophisticated software that would optimize power cost and demand, winning their category and the overall prize. This is the second time a Purdue team has won this competition.

AAE doctoral student Takaharu Igarashi received the Brian Mar Best Student Paper award during the International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE) 32nd Annual International Symposium. Igarashi’s paper covers the need for a framework in identifying causes in construction failures.

He proposes a system that would improve data collection from construction failures, which would produce better research results and reduce future catastrophic failures in the built environment. He hopes that better research on the ground will result in better-built structures in space.

Three months into her doctoral research, Stefannie Morales Jiménez was awarded a NASA Space Technology Graduate Research Opportunities fellowship. With guidance from Timotheé Pourpoint, professor of aeronautics and astronautics, she is researching hypergolic propellants that meet or surpass the performance of the state-of-the-art while providing properties that are less toxic for handling, storage and operation.

Morales Jiménez is one of just 49 people to earn this prestigious NASA fellowship this year. The funding covers tuition, conference and travel expenses, supplies and a stipend for up to four years.

Maaninee Gupta was selected to receive the Zonta International Amelia Earhart Fellowship. Gupta is one of 30 women receiving this fellowship in 2022.

With her $10,000 award, Gupta will continue her research in cislunar spacecraft dynamics with Kathleen Howell, the Hsu Lo Distinguished Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Gupta has been working with Howell’s Multi-Body Dynamics Research Group since 2018.

Mere weeks before the spring 2022 graduation, Alex Kardashian (BSAAE ’22) stepped out of his go-kart at the Purdue Grand Prix race track and accepted his winner’s trophy for the 65th running of the race. He got an early jump into the lead when the green flag waved, and held his lead over 2021 champion Jacob Peddycord until the checkers dropped 150 laps later. Three of Kardashian’s teammates were also AAE students.

Angie Zhang and Daniel Mayper, who both graduated with bachelor’s degrees in spring 2022, were selected from an international pool of candidates as among the top 20 students "on course to change the face of the aerospace and defense industry."

This is the sixth consecutive year that at least two of the Aviation Week 20 Twenties winners were Purdue AAE students. Aviation Week’s selections are based on academic performance, an ability to contribute to a broader community and to communicate the value of the design or research they’ve undertaken.