Zonta International awards Amelia Earhart Fellowships to AAE Students

The Zonta International Amelia Earhart Fellowships were established in 1938 in honor of Amelia Earhart, famed pilot and Zonta club member. The Fellowships are granted annually to women pursuing graduate Ph.D./doctoral degrees in aerospace-related sciences and aerospace-related engineering.

2008 Recipient

Xiaohui Guo is a PhD student in School of Aeronautics and Astronautics Engineering, Purdue  University. She got her M.S. degree in Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, University of Southern California, and her B.S. degree in Dept. of Engineering Mechanics, Tsinghua University, Beijing. Her research interests are simulations of rarefied gas flows and gas-surface interactions in microdevices. She worked with Prof Alexeenko and Prof Sullivan on numerical and experimental investigation of rarefied microchannel gas flows, and the results has been published in Journal of Micromech. & Microeng. (JMM), Jan., 2007. She is now working with Prof Alexeenko and Prof Murthy on developing coupled gas-solid Boltzmann solver, and the preliminary results have been submitted to Heat Transfer Conference held this summer in Florida.

2007 Recipients

Farhana Pervin’s PhD program is to develop a testing method to perform dynamic tensile response experiments of small aero structures at high strain rates. The mechanical response of an aero structure (for example, a turbine engine) to an impact of a high velocity object is of paramount importance for designers and manufacturers. Her research objectives are to develop test techniques and procedures for specimens of the order of micrometers using the split Hopkinson pressure bar. Conventional techniques are unable to test specimens from sub millimeter-sized samples due to the local inhomogeneity and anisotropic nature of the materials. Her research will also develop unique approaches or techniques to specimen preparation, grip and strain measurements. Ms. Pervin is an active member of the Bangladesh Society of Mechanical Engineers and of the Bangladesh Student Association at PurdueUniversity.

Yen Yu has passed her PhD qualifying examination and has defined the exact field of her research. She will use her second Fellowship to quantitatively identify the controlling mechanisms of combustion instability in rocket engines and gas turbine augmenters. She will develop and validate a model of the combustion response to an unsteady acoustic field in the chamber. Her research efforts comprise both detailed computations and experiments. She has also developed a complete data acquisition and control system for the new high-pressure hydrogen laboratory at Purdue University. Ms. Yu’s personal goal is promoting women in engineering and international collaboration. She is a member of the Society of Women Engineers and has launched model rockets for elementary school students.