AAE alumnus Dr. Rakesh K. Kapania has been awarded the Platinum Jubilee Award by the School of Aerospace Engineering at the prestigious Indian Institute of Science.

The School was established in 1942 and has close to 7,000 alumni. To mark its platinum jubilee, the School has selected 35 of its former students for the Platinum Jubilee Award.  

Dr. Kapania, the Norris and Wendy Mitchell Endowed Professor at Virginia Tech and a winner of the 2014 Outstanding Aerospace Engineer Award from Purdue AAE, is a renowned expert in aerospace structures and multidisciplinary design optimization.

For his outstanding contributions to the MDO of Truss-Braced Aircraft, Efficient Supersonic Vehicles and MDO of bio-inspired internal design of subsonic and supersonic wing structures, he was awarded the 2016 AIAA/ISSMO Multidisciplinary Design Optimization Award.

Dr. Kapania is also a highly sought-after thesis advisor at Virginia Tech, where he has guided 44 PhD students. 

Dr. Kapania credits Prof. Henry Yang, his PhD thesis advisor, along with the exceptional graduate education that he received from other faculty members in AAE for his subsequent success as a teacher, scholar and a researcher.

Photo courtesy of Virginia Tech