Helen L. Reed Wins 2018 Yvonne C. Brill Lectureship in Aerospace Engineering Written 16 February 2018

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
AIAA
John Blacksten
703.264.7532
johnb@aiaa.org

Will Deliver October Address on “Student Design-Build-Fly Micro- and Nano-Satellites”

February 16, 2018 – Reston, Va. – The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) is pleased to announce that it has selected AIAA Fellow Dr. Helen L. Reed, Regents Professor at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas, as the recipient of the third Yvonne C. Brill Lectureship in Aerospace Engineering.

Reed will present her lecture, “Student Design-Build-Fly Micro- and Nano-Satellites,” on Tuesday, October 2, 2018, in conjunction with the National Academy of Engineering’s Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C.

Notably, Dr. Reed has contributed to the discipline through her Satellite Design Programs: first at Arizona State University (ASUSat Lab) and then when her Lab moved with her to Texas A&M and became AggieSat Lab. She found effective ways to create interdisciplinary teams of undergraduate and graduate students, with industry and government affiliates, to engage in design-build-fly of operational small satellites while advancing new technologies that feed into national initiatives and learning industry practices within the university environment. Involving more than 1,000 students over the years, her team has launched four small satellites with the U.S. Air Force and NASA and partnered on other projects. Her students have joined space-oriented businesses and the national laboratories.

Dr. Reed is also an acknowledged national and international expert in laminar-to-turbulent transition. Her technical expertise is reflected in comprehensive pioneering contributions that integrate perceptive discernment of the fundamental physics of transitional flows with best-in-class simulations revealing key phenomenological details. Her work has not only provided essential fundamental insight into complex fluid dynamic processes, but also strongly influenced the development of aerospace systems. As lead computational person, Dr. Reed has teamed throughout her career with experimentalists to achieve a high degree of closure between theory and experiment. She has developed stability and transition tools that include linear stability theory, nonlinear parabolized stability equations, and direct numerical simulation of the Navier-Stokes equations. Her tools have supported and validated meaningful ground and flight experiments aimed at understanding the physics of transition and maturing drag reducing technologies.

Dr. Reed has been honored with the 2018 AIAA Fluid Dynamics Award for “lifetime achievements in the fundamental understanding, modeling, and control of boundary-layer laminar-to-turbulent transition for aerospace vehicles from subsonic to hypersonic,” the 2016 American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Kate Gleason Award for “lifetime achievements in the fundamental understanding and control of boundary layer transition for high-efficiency aerospace vehicles, and in pioneering small satellite design and implementation,” and the 2007 J. Leland Atwood Award for important contributions to space systems engineering and space systems design education. She holds both the title of Presidential Professor for Teaching Excellence and the Edward "Pete" Aldridge '60 Professorship at Texas A&M. As well as being an AIAA Fellow, she is also a Fellow of ASME and the American Physical Society.

AIAA, with the participation and support of NAE, created the Yvonne C. Brill Lectureship in Aerospace Engineering to honor the memory of the late, pioneering rocket scientist, AIAA Honorary Fellow and NAE Member, Yvonne C. Brill. Brill was best known for developing a revolutionary propulsion system that remains the industry standard for geostationary satellite station-keeping.

The Lecture emphasizes research or engineering issues for space travel and exploration, aerospace education of students and the public, and other aerospace issues such as ensuring a diverse and robust engineering community.

About AIAA 
The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) is the world’s largest aerospace technical society. With nearly 30,000 individual members from 85 countries, and 95 corporate members, AIAA brings together industry, academia, and government to advance engineering and science in aviation, space, and defense. For more information, www.aiaa.org, or follow us on Twitter @AIAA.

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