Hypersonic Propulsion Concepts: Design, Control, Operation, and Testing – Online Short Course (Starts 20 October 2026) 20 October 2026 - 12 November 2026 Online

COURSE DELIVERY AND MATERIALS

• The course lectures will be delivered via Zoom. Access to the Zoom classroom will be provided to registrants near to the course start date.
• All sessions will be available on-demand within 1-2 days of the lecture. Once available, you can stream the replay video anytime, 24/7.
• All slides will be available for download after each lecture. No part of these materials may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted, unless for course participants. All rights reserved.
• Between lectures during the course, the instructor(s) will be available via email for technical questions and comments.

Instructors (from the AIAA High Speed Air-Breathing Propulsion Technical Committee and Academia, in no particular order):

INSTRUCTORS

Dr. Kevin Bowcutt, Boeing Research & Technology. Dr. Kevin G. Bowcutt is a Principal Senior Technical Fellow & Chief Scientist of Hypersonics for Boeing with 38 years of experience. He is an AIAA Fellow, a Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society, and a member of the National Academy of Engineering. He holds BS, MS and PhD degrees in aerospace engineering from the University of Maryland. Dr. Bowcutt is an internationally recognized expert in hypersonic aerodynamics, propulsion integration, and vehicle design and optimization. Notable accomplishments include developing the viscous-optimized hypersonic waverider; flight testing scramjets by shooting them from a light gas gun; originating and optimizing the design of the X-51A scramjet-powered demo vehicle; helping the Space Shuttle Columbia accident investigation by simulating wing aero-thermal-structural failure; and leading Boeing’s contributions to the HIFiRE international hypersonic flight experiment program. In the spring semester of 2007 Dr. Bowcutt was a visiting professor at Princeton University’s Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department where he taught a course in hypersonic airplane design. Dr. Bowcutt leads Boeing’s advanced design efforts for hypersonic missiles, airplanes and space-planes, and is the technical lead for Boeing’s hypersonic passenger airplane program.

Dr. F. Joel Malo de Molina is Specter Aerospace’s Technical Director, leading development programs on high-speed air-breathing systems. Prior to Specter, he was Raytheon Missile Systems’ subject matter expert on combustion physics, hypersonic propulsion and vehicle design integration for over a decade. Dr. Malo de Molina was the lead inventor of innovative hypersonic inlets and author of several patents on high-speed propulsion. His preceding experience also includes 13 years with the Air Force Research Laboratory, serving as Principal Investigator supporting a multitude of development programs in hypersonic vehicles and their propulsion integration. His awards received include Raytheon Inventor of the Year, Chief Scientist Innovative Research, Science & Technology Research Award, AFRL Foulous Basic Research, US Air Force AFOSR Star, NASA’s Space Grant Project (ESAS), and others. He holds a Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology and has published over 120 technical articles as an expert on high fidelity numerical methods, performance and trajectory analysis, scramjets, rotational/pulse detonations engines, gas turbines, vehicle-propulsion integration, rocket engines, solid motors and chemically reacting flows. Dr. Malo de Molina has led analysis and design teams, mentored and taught short courses to professionals at universities and at AIAA conferences. Many of these have been recognized nationally and internationally for expertise in high-speed aerodynamics and supersonic combustion. Within AIAA, he has an Associate Fellowship, has chaired the HSABP-TC and was Technical Conference Chair for the AIAA International Propulsion and Energy Forum.

Dr. Jason Etele has been teaching and researching aerospace propulsion at Carleton University (Canada) for over a decade and a half and is the author of the book “Fundamentals of Transatmospheric and Space Propulsion”. He has been an invited lecturer for several AIAA Short Courses on High Speed Airbreathing Propulsion, an invited instructor on Space Systems and Propulsion at Tohoku University (Japan), and a visiting professor at Clarkson University. He has also been an invited researcher at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) where he investigated airbreathing rocket concepts.

Mr. Tom Smith, Technical Fellow at Boeing, is a conceptual aircraft designer specializing in hypersonic air-breathing aircraft and spaceplanes. He designed the X-40, X-37A and X-37B spaceplanes. He has innovated concepts in the area of inward turning inlets for scramjet propulsion. He has broad skills in aerodynamics, structural design, propulsion integration, and multi-disciplinary optimization.

Dr. Ragini Acharya. Associate Professor, University of Tennessee Space Institute. 23 years of research and professional combined experience, including 15 years of post-PhD research experience in high-speed propulsion encompassing fundamental research as well as applications. Technical Expertise – Model development: Hypersonics, Uncertainty quantification, Hi-speed flows, Multi-physics, multi-phase, reacting and non-reacting flows, Surface Regression, Combustion-flame interaction; Hi-Fidelity reacting CFD: Large eddy simulation, unsteady RANS, Direct Numerical Simulation; Numerical Methods: High resolution shock-capturing methods, Wall Resolved Large Eddy Simulation (LES), Spectral Element; Applications: Hypersonic Flows, High-speed Aerothermochemistry, Reacting Boundary Layer Flows, Boundary Layer Transition, Alternative Fuels and Emissions

Dr. Robert Baurle is the technical lead for CFD development activities within the Hypersonic Air-breathing Propulsion Branch at the NASA Langley Research Center and is the primary developer of the VULCAN-CFD package. As a senior member of the branch, Baurle also provides subject matter expertise to DoD sponsored scramjet development programs. Prior to his position at NASA, Baurle was employed at Taitech, Inc., located at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, where he was the Principal or Co-Investigator on numerous high-speed propulsion projects ranging from liquid fueled ducted rockets to scramjet engines. Baurle currently chairs the JANNAF Simulation Credibility Panel, JANNAF Component Modeling and Simulation Panel, and has received five “Best Paper” awards at AIAA and JANNAF conferences along with two awards related to software development at NASA.

Dr. Khaled Sallam. Associate Professor, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Oklahoma State University, Tulsa. Co-Author of the recently published book, “An Introduction to Combustion with Applications Using Cantera”

Dr. Zekai Hong is a Principal Research Officer at the National Research Council Canada’s Aerospace Research Centre. He also serves as an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Ottawa and as the Educational Subcommittee Chair of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) High-Speed Air-Breathing Propulsion Technical Committee.

Dr. Friedolin Strauss. Engineer and Researcher at German Aerospace Center DLR.

Dr. Suo Yang is an Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Minnesota. During 2017-2018, he was a Postdoctoral Research Associate of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering at Princeton University. Dr. Yang received his Ph.D. (2017) and M.S. (2014) degrees in Aerospace Engineering, and another M.S. degree in Computational Science & Engineering (2015), all from the Georgia Institute of Technology. Dr. Yang’s research focuses on the modeling and simulation of turbulent reacting & multiphase flows, including combustion, non-equilibrium plasma, particulate & gas-liquid flows, and hypersonics, with applications in aerospace propulsion & energy systems. He is an awardee of the 2021 DARPA Young Faculty Award (YFA), 2022 ONR Young Investigator (YIP) Award, 2023 DARPA Director’s Fellowship Award, 2024 AFOSR Young Investigator (YIP) Award, and 2026 Central States Section of the Combustion Institute (CSSCI) Early Career Award (inaugural). Dr. Yang has authored over 100 journal articles and refereed conference papers, in which he received 5 Editor’s Pick or Featured Article awards from Physics of Fluids and Combustion and Flame. Dr. Yang is a Senior Member of AIAA and a member of 3 AIAA Technical Committees. He has served as a Technical Discipline Chair or Deputy Chair 5 times for AIAA SciTech Forums. He also actively serves as a reviewer for many top-tier journals for which he received 4 Outstanding Reviewer Awards.