“We often spend years working on a concept, gathering a thorough understanding of the physics, formulating a control strategy, and comprehensively testing it for robustness and logical errors before conducting a flight test. The moments when you see years of hard work pay off are very exciting.”
David has been the author or co-author of over 190 widely cited scholarly publications and has been awarded 8 U.S. patents. He served as an associate editor for the Journal of Guidance, Control and Dynamics for 9 years and currently serves on its advisory board. He is a former chair of the AIAA Guidance, Navigation, and Control Technical Committee.
David has been the recipient or corecipient of several of the top technical awards within the Aerospace Systems Directorate, including the General Benjamin D. Foulois Award (2003, 2010, 2016), the S.D. Heron Award (2012, 2022), the Courtland D. Perkins Award (2000), and the 2022 Director’s Trophy Team Award. He received the Air Force Civilian Achievement Award in 2012 for contributions to the area of control allocation.
In 2011, he received the highest award presented by the U.S. Air Force for basic research, the John L. McLucas Award, for contributions to the science of dynamics and control of flappingwing micro air vehicles.
He was awarded an honorary Doctor of Science degree from West Virginia University in 2016. He was awarded the Royal Aeronautical Society Silver Medal in 2008 for contributions to control-oriented modeling for air-breathing hypersonic vehicles.
David is a Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, a Fellow of the Air Force Research Laboratory, and a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.