"Purdue graduates have advanced the state of the art in many areas of aeronautics and astronautics, ranging from aircraft design and analysis, materials technology, propulsion technology, and other key areas for aircraft and space vehicles. To be recognized for my personal contributions among these achievements is quite an honor.”
Steven Wanthal's three decades of experience have made him an expert in his field. He has spent most of his career researching structure design and analysis, composite material development, and composite manufacturing technology. Steven has more than 45 publications to his name related to composite materials and structures research, and he holds 7 patents on composite applications for aircraft structures.
He began at McDonnell Douglas in 1989 working at the St. Louis facility and remained there through its acquisition by Boeing. Steven recently moved to the Boeing facility in Charleston, South Carolina where the composite 787 aircraft is built.
Steven was named a technical fellow at Boeing in 2007. This is a rare recognition given to only a small percentage of Boeing's workforce.
Currently leading an industry group under the NASA/Industry Advanced Composites Consortium, Steven's work is advancing composite design toolsets for structural analysis. He previously led another industry team doing structures research under the NASA Advanced Composite Project and the U.S. Air Force/Navy Composites Affordability Initiative.
Steven has supported composite research ranging from supersonic aircraft to cryogenic tanks for launch vehicles. He has been principal investigator on proprietary R&D efforts and DoD-contracted research in analyzing composite structures.
Steven has chaired the composites industry advisory board at the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre in the UK. He is also a longtime participant in AIAA Technical Committees, and is a former chair of the AIAA Materials Technical Committee.