Tag: Orlando

AIAA SciTech Forum 2026 to Break Barriers Together

Registration Is Open for the World’s Largest Aerospace R&D Event

October 9, 2025 – Reston, Va. – AIAA announced registration is open for the premier aerospace R&D event of the year, AIAA SciTech Forum 2026, 12–16 January, Hyatt Regency Orlando, Orlando, Florida.

The forum’s inspirational theme, “Breaking Barriers Together: Boundless Discovery,” will deliver sessions and presentations envisioning the possibilities for aerospace’s future. More than 5,000 engineering minds from across industry, government, and academia are expected to gather, setting the pace of innovation and connection for the year.

From artificial intelligence and autonomy to high-speed propulsion and quantum computing, the program is designed to engage aerospace professionals in the next breakthroughs. The forum features nearly 3,000 technical presentations, as well as an extensive lineup of aerospace and defense industry leaders and innovators from across industry, government, and academia as speakers.

Confirmed plenary speakers include:

  • Jonathan Arenberg, Fellow and Chief Mission Architect for Science and Robotic Exploration, Northrop Grumman, will provide a unique look at NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, the premier observatory of the next decade that is studying every phase in the history of our universe. Having served as Northrop Grumman’s chief engineer on Webb, he will share his insights into its origins, development, operation, and lessons learned.
  • Arbi Karapetian, Director, Innovation and Technology, Formula 1, will share how early-stage science and technology innovation fuels performance across industries. He will draw from his nearly 30 years of aerospace experience, most recently with NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

New this year is the intensive Career Accelerator Program for university students. This full-day program will provide practical and actionable strategies to attendees to launch and navigate their careers in aerospace. Planned for Monday, 12 January, attendees will gain insights into what it takes to succeed in the industry with a series of expert-led microsessions offering leadership development tools and the latest career advice. The popular Student Lounge will be sponsored by Lockheed Martin for the next generation of aerospace professionals to network with each other throughout the week.

Premier sponsor Lockheed Martin will deliver sessions during the week on its AI Fight Club™, a head-to-head competitive environment designed to accelerate how artificial intelligence is developed and deployed. Speakers will share insights about this comprehensive testing ground that simulates how AI systems perform across domains – air, land, sea and space – to test models that meet Department of Defense (DOD) qualifications.

Features of the forum include:

  • 60+ Technical Disciplines: The deep technical content sets an AIAA forum apart from other industry events. Technical sessions will cover applied aerodynamics; fluid dynamics; guidance, navigation, and control; intelligent systems; propellants and combustion; and many more.
  • 100+ Exhibitors: With hardware displays to live demos to hands-on experiences, the expanded Expo Hall will showcase the latest technological developments from top companies, universities, and government agencies.
  • Rising Leaders in Aerospace: Special programming and networking opportunities are scheduled for young professionals, designed by young professionals, including the popular Speed Mentoring session, as well as panels and interactive workshops on a variety of topics.
  • Meet the Employers and Meet the Universities: These speed networking style events return for AIAA Corporate Members to recruit students and young professionals seeking their next steps in employment or advanced degree programs.
  • Talks at the HUB: The Expo Hall will feature a series of lightning talks from innovators and inventors, with direct audience engagement from the dedicated HUB stage.

Additional speakers will be announced in the coming weeks. For the most up-to-date program and registration information, visit SciTech.aiaa.org. Press passes are available by emailing [email protected].

Media Contact: Rebecca Gray, [email protected], 804-397-5270 cell

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 91 countries, and 100 corporate members, AIAA brings together industry, academia, and government to advance engineering and science in aviation, space, and defense. For more information, visit www.aiaa.org, and follow AIAA on LinkedIn, Instagram, X/Twitter, and Facebook.

Dryden Lecturer Addresses Future of Getting to Greener Aviation

By Anne Wainscott-Sargent, AIAA Communications Team

As the aviation sector looks to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050, the biggest gains may not happen in the air but on the ground, stated Tim Lieuwen, the 2025 AIAA Dryden Lecturer in Research, during the 2025 AIAA SciTech Forum in January.

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“The least cost way to get to a net-zero society is to take a system view about economy-wide CO2 emissions and where and how aviation fits into that, rather than trying to zero out CO2 emissions sector by sector.  It makes sense if you think about it – it’s a whole lot cheaper to manage your CO2 emissions from something that’s sitting on the ground, potentially sitting right above a depleted oil reservoir versus trying to manage something that’s flying around and has to deal with all the safety issues of aviation,” said Lieuwen.

The Georgia Tech executive vice president for Research, Regents’ Professor, holder of the David S. Lewis, Jr. Chair, and the executive director of the Strategic Energy Institute  explored the interconnectedness of energy sources, carriers, and storage systems, noting the significant role of fossil fuels in the current U.S. energy system and the potential for synthetic fuels.

He highlighted four different options for zeroing out climate impacts using a high-fidelity model of the entire energy system. Organized in a 2×2 matrix, the model showed the option of economy-wide decarbonization, where different sectors contribute in a coordinated way. Then he presented a visual of sector-by-sector decarbonization, where each sector individually zeroes out its contributions.

According to the EPA, transportation is the largest contributor of CO2 emissions, with the aviation sector contributing roughly 2.5%, compared with 28% from automobiles.

Lieuwen noted there is a difference between zero CO2 and net zero. Net zero focuses on the overall CO2 emissions budget, allowing for some sectors to potentially emit CO2 and some sectors to be net-negative CO2.  In this scenario, the least-cost role of aviation in an economy wide net-zero CO2 society is a mix of conventional fossil fuels and renewable hydrocarbons like sustainable aviation fuels (SAF). If aviation’s aim is to pursue “a least-cost societal net-zero target,” then he advocated for an economy-wide net zero strategy.

Using a least-cost model, the energy expert showed some surprising insights where fossil fuels and renewable fuels are equally split 50/50.

“Half are fossil fuels and the other half are synthetic fuels that you can manufacture like SAF. You see big growth in renewables and big growth in biofuels,” he explained.

Lieuwen also observed that in this least-cost world, half of all energy will rely on electricity which will prompt big growth in electrification, going from 20% to 50%. He also predicted significant R&D investments around power electronics, high-voltage motors, batteries, and energy storage.

Fossil Fuels Dominate Current Energy Economy
Another big takeaway was how society moves and stores energy will continue to use  fossil fuels, although in a significantly diminished role from today.

“We’re in an 80/20 split with the current U.S. energy economy as a whole, which means that we use fossil fuels roughly for 80% of the means by which we move energy around and store it. We use electricity as an energy carrier for the other 20%. These are multi-trillion-dollar sectors. It’s important to recognize the interconnectedness of all this. For example, the aviation sector is leveraging and contributing technologically to and is also benefiting from infrastructure of existing industrial sectors, such as oil pipelines and the oil refining industry.”

Aviation’s Critical Role
Part of achieving this least-cost societal net-zero target in aviation is developing SAF, which currently are more expensive than fossil fuel, and will likely require policy levers, carbon taxes, or tax credits to become a reality, Lieuwen predicted.

There will continue to be a premium placed on aviation advances that offer thermal efficiency as well as operational flexibility.

“The ability to have systems that are low emission/high efficiency, but yet don’t surge/don’t stall, where your flame stays attached, where the system is stable, is very, very important,” said the researcher before briefly sharing highlights of his research that focuses on better understanding the interaction of how fast waves of flames move in combustion engines.

“The interaction of acoustic waves… create interference patterns which are controlled by how fast vortices move versus how fast waves on flames move,” he explained. “If a vortex is not moving at the same speed, what’s happening is you have two periodical disturbances moving at different velocities.”

This phenomenon leads to destructive instabilities in rockets, in home heaters, and in aircraft engines, Lieuwen shared.

Asked after his presentation if he thought the increased tempo in rocket launches would hurt efforts to decarbonize, Lieuwen said, “I would suspect the overall carbon footprint that is going to those direct launches will pale relative to other sectors.” He predicted major follow-on secondary impacts from all the satellite activity, however.

Nuclear’s Potential
Another question concerned the role of nuclear energy in getting to net zero. “Nuclear is really important,” said Lieuwen. “In fact, if we could solve this problem of low-cost nuclear [energy] it would totally transform what least-cost net zero looks like.”

Amanda Simpson, former deputy assistant Secretary for Energy under the Obama administration who also directed the U.S. Army Office of Energy Initiatives, found Lieuwen’s remarks timely and on target. The former VP for Research and Technology and head of Sustainability for Airbus Americas said that the aviation sector has grappled with the question of whether net zero by 2050 is the right commitment.

“While it’s an admirable goal, is it a realistic? It’s a very expensive and difficult goal,” she said.
Simpson added that addressing the CO2 issue in aviation is also hard, and she agreed with Lieuwen that it’s easier to decarbonize something on the ground.

“There’s so much to be done in the remaining 26 years, we have to go after everything. There is not going to be a silver bullet – we have to tackle everything to start bringing the [greenhouse gas usage] totals back,” she said.

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The ‘Golden Age’ of AI and Autonomy

Panel Highlights Critical Role of AI and Autonomy on Earth and in Space

By Anne Wainscott-Sargent, AIAA Communications Team

ORLANDO, Fla. – In the future artificial intelligence (AI) and autonomous systems will transform how people and assets are tracked, whether on Earth or in space, noted speakers on an AIAA SciTech Forum plenary on AI and Autonomy last Thursday, 9 January.

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Advances in real-time monitoring and connectivity will help first responders act fast, said one panelist, recalling a 2012 Sausalito, California, road fatality caused when a man crashed his car following a heart attack. He was traveling alone at night, with no one aware of his location.

“In a world where we have a fully connected comms system, that plays out very differently,” said Eric Smith, senior principal, Remote Sensing and Data Analytics at Lockheed Martin Space.

Redefining Accident Response

Not only would AI wearable tech proactively monitor the man’s medical condition, it also would alert EMS and even coordinate traffic control systems to ensure the speediest response to his location.

The plenary session highlighted advancements in AI and their applications in simulation, safety, and decision making, as well as how autonomous systems are reshaping the future of space exploration.

“This is a golden age for robotics and autonomy,” noted Marco Pavone, lead autonomous vehicle researcher at Nvidia and an associate professor at Stanford University in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

His focus is fourfold: 1) develop visual language models for vehicle autonomy architectures, 2) find other ways of architecting autonomous tasks, 3) explore simulation technologies to enable end-to-end simulation of autonomous tasks in a realistic and controllable way, and 4) research AI safety – building safe and trustworthy AI systems, particularly in space systems and self-driving cars.

Pavone also co-founded a new center at Stanford – the Center for AEroSpace Autonomy Research (CAESAR), which was formed to advance the state of the art by infusing autonomous reasoning capabilities in aerospace systems.

“At the center we are looking at AI techniques for constructions tasks for other space systems and we’re even developing space foundation models that take into account specific inputs and outputs,” he said.

Lockheed Martin is using AI in all four domains of its business – Space, Missiles and Fire Control, Rotary Systems, and Aeronautics. The company envisions AI for autonomy in unstructured environments like the surface of the moon or Mars, with multiagent cooperative autonomy for manufacturing and assembly.

Smart Robots Likely to Precede Humans to Mars

“I foresee the first habitable, critical infrastructure on the surface of Mars being constructed by a team of robots using material and tools and high-level instructions that say, ‘Do the following things’ [in preparation] for humans to arrive,” said Smith.

On the ground, autonomy and AI advances will play an important role in land-use monitoring, to manage and coordinate disaster response and asset tracking, and will work even if objects pass under bridges or under cloud cover. Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control has a department called Advanced Autonomy concerned with autonomous ground vehicles.

Better Fire Prediction and Detection

According to Smith, the group is exploring advanced technologies to help firefighters better predict, detect, and fight wildfires. The technology could predict and locate a fire hours before it even starts from a lightning strike. Using the power of AI, Lockheed’s technology could also analyze fire behavior in near real-time to enable fire growth predictions and to deliver persistent communications across multiagency air and land suppression units, so they might respond quicker to a large complex fire. Unfortunately, the technology is only in test mode; it’s not currently helping fight the fires ravaging southern California, said Smith.

Moderator Julie Shah, Department Head and H.N. Slater Professor in Aeronautics and Astronautics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), discussed how much the world has changed in the context of AI over the last two decades.

Continually Evolving AI Systems

“When I did my Ph.D., it was on automated planning and scheduling with no machine learning,” recalled Shah. “When I started my career on faculty, I remember a colleague at NASA told me … nothing that learns online will ever fly in space. In the blink of an eye, a few years later, all I did in my lab was machine learning.”

Pavone agreed with Shah that future aerospace missions, especially for space exploration, will need AI systems that can continue to evolve and learn after they deploy.

“Adaptation is needed and so that’s something we are working on,” said Pavone, noting that his lab is collaborating with The Aerospace Corporation on AI systems that can serve anomalies – “How do you use those anomalies to train your system on the ground so that you can still do validation and then improve it?”

Following the panel, Pavone emphasized that foundation models, dark language, and vision language models all provide “several opportunities to rethink how we build autonomous systems.”

He pointed to several breakthroughs in simulation technologies, which will make simulation a powerful tool of autonomous systems.

Aerospace: Lessons from Automotive’s AI Experience

Pavone added that while the application domain he focuses on at Nvidia is primarily automotive (self-driving cars), aerospace researchers can learn from the automotive industry.

“The automotive [industry] has been building AI systems for a while now, and they have built quite a bit of competence in terms of which AI system should be fielded and also how to provide that they are safe and reliable. So, both the methodologies and the safety standards that have been developed  by the automotive community could be useful for the aerospace community,” he said.

Forum Attendees Weigh In On AI

Following the plenary, Jorge Hernandez, president of Texas-based Bastion Technologies, said, “Just the opportunity to hear how different organizations are working with AI was fantastic. What Stanford, Lockheed, and MIT are doing is exceptional. We’re all interested in seeing how that will impact us in the future…and we’re all interested getting involved.”

His firm focuses on safety and mission assurance and mechanical engineering, said Hernandez. “We get involved on the risk and analysis side, so how AI plays into that will be an important piece of what we do.”

Rudy Al Ahmar, a PhD student who is completing his aerospace engineering studies at Auburn University’s Advanced Propulsion Research Laboratory this semester, agreed with the panelists – there was a lot of skepticism about AI and machine learning five years ago, but those concerns were addressed within a few years.  The same thing has happened with generative AI.

“For a lot of scientists and researchers, it’s not a matter of if they’re going to use AI and machine learning, it’s a matter of when and how they’re going to implement it – whether on a large scale or small scale,” he said.

The doctoral candidate said he hopes to research AI and machine learning integration with computational fluid dynamics (CFD) as a university assistant professor.

“It’s computationally demanding to work on these aerospace applications with CFD. AI and machine learning can reduce the computational cost and make things rapid so you can optimize and study things much, much quicker.”

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Sustainable Aviation Fuels and Advanced Propulsion Tech Will Help Industry Achieve Net Zero Goals by 2050

By Anne Wainscott-Sargent, AIAA Communications Team

ORLANDO, Fla. – An expert panel composed of three top aviation original equipment manufacturers (OEM), NASA, and the U.S. Department of Energy tackled how propulsion technology will drive the industry to achieve its goals for net zero carbon emissions by 2050 during the 2025 AIAA SciTech Forum.

Panelists emphasized fleet renewal, sustainable aviation fuels, and advanced propulsion technologies to help the industry achieve its carbon-mitigation goals.

“Aerospace is one of the hardest sectors to decarbonize,” noted Peter de Bock, program director for the Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E).

Organized similarly to DARPA, ARPA-E advances high-potential, high-impact energy technologies that are too early for private-sector investment. ARPA-E awardees are unique because they are developing entirely new ways to generate, store, and use energy.

“We take high-risk bets on the next generation of technology. What are things that the world would need 10 years from now?”

His agency is focusing closely on the transportation sector, which leads emissions over power generation, said de Bock, who predicts that the industry will get more scrutiny starting in 2030 and through the next decade.

“We see multiple modalities to be the path to the future. Anything you can do fully electric… can push the efficiency to 75 or 80%. That’s a big deal. It’s extremely hard but worth the try.”

ARPA-E supports innovative technologies across the spectrum, including high-temperature alloys, atmospheric sensors, and sustainable aviation fuel production.

Low-hanging fruit for several aviation engine builders centers on technology improvements that drive fuel efficiency given how much fuel costs airlines’ bottom lines.

More Efficient Propulsion

Michael Winter, chief science officer at RTX, and senior fellow of Advanced Technology at Pratt & Whitney, said 30–40% of the cost of running an airline and a modern airport is fuel.

“Propulsion efficiency really comes down to the fan or propulsor and the bypass in the nozzle,” he said.

Pratt & Whitney in 2016 introduced a geared-fan architecture that has enabled a 16% improvement in fuel efficiency, noted Winter. Its geared turbofan (GTF) engine technology uses a specially designed fan that rotates at a slower speed while still achieving high bypass ratios, leading to significant fuel savings and reduced noise emissions compared to previous engine designs.

“As we look to the future, we see opportunities for greater efficiency – number one, going to higher thermal efficiency in engines, which over the last 85 years has improved about 400%.” Winter added that higher thermal efficiency creates higher temperatures requiring new material systems and better cooling.

Saving Fuel with Propulsive Technology 

On the propulsion technology front, GE Aerospace is embracing open fan technology. While not a new technology, it has matured over the last decade and a half, allowing it to be “as fast as a jet, [quiet], and 20% more efficient than today’s engines,” according to a recent GE Aerospace blog post.

GE Aerospace recently was awarded 840,000 hours on the Frontier supercomputer through the agency’s INCITE program. INCITE is a highly competitive program that supports the world’s most computationally intensive projects. Frontier was introduced in depth at another session during the forum by Bronson Messer II, director of science for the Leadership Computing Facility at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). (Read more on Frontier here.)

In November, the company announced a new project with Boeing, NASA, and ORNL to model the integration of an open fan engine design with an airplane.

UK-based Rolls-Royce is pursuing continuous improvement in its gas turbine and power systems, including materials, cooling, and cycle efficiencies. Steve Wellborn, the company’s senior fellow, said enhanced integration at the platform level will be critical for achieving these breakthroughs in fuel efficiency.

Embracing Whole-System Integration 

Wellborn added that he sees a lot of manufacturing, digital, and service technologies coming together. “You’re no longer just bolting engines onto an aircraft; you have to think of the whole system together.”

“At the forefront of this has to be safety,” he said.

Kathleen Mondino, manager of RISE Technology Maturation at GE Aerospace, also considers integration a critical trend. She predicts the future will be one that leverages open fan technology – “that means viewing the engine and aircraft together as one system, which hasn’t been done before.”

Filling Capability Gaps

NASA Glenn Research Center provides avionics providers with the tools and capabilities for optimization and simulation they need when looking at new architectures.

“We also look at where there might be a gap where there are lower technology readiness levels and do some work in that,” said Joseph Connolly, deputy for Electrified Aircraft Propulsion Integration at NASA Glenn Research Center.

NASA is supporting several papers at the forum looking at concepts for hybrid-electric configuration with distribution propulsion to see what benefits the technologies might offer industry partners in the future.

Connolly also shared details on NASA’s work on the Electrified Powertrain Flight Demonstration project, involving GE Aerospace and magniX, to develop a megawatt-class powertrain for commercial aircraft by the 2030s. The project includes a parallel hybrid architecture for a Saab 340 and a regional turboprop demonstrator for a Dash 7.

NASA’s efforts focus on addressing key barriers in electrification, including high voltage at altitude and battery system performance.

Investing in Sustainable Fuels

Sustainable fuels are a big area of investment across the OEM community. “We see huge opportunities in hydrogen,” said Winter, citing the new HySIITE (Hydrogen, Steam Injected Intercooled Turbine Engine) concept, shown to be 35% more efficient while reducing oxides of nitrogen by 99.3% and recapturing one gallon of water every three seconds.

Capitalizing on Coming Fleet Renewals
Moving aircraft to more efficient propulsion will likely occur at the end of this decade, said Mondino.

“GE Aerospace is laser focused on the narrow-body market,” she said, adding that those aircraft fleets are up for renewal toward the end of this decade or at the beginning of the next.

She emphasized that making this transition will require “a big step change” in how the OEM market approaches product innovation and problem-solving.

“You’ve got to break out of the box that you’re currently in,” she said.

Celebrating Diverse Voices in Aerospace at AIAA SciTech Forum

By Anne Wainscott-Sargent, AIAA Communications Team

ORLANDO, Fla. – On the final evening of the 2025 AIAA SciTech Forum, female aerospace leaders, students, and allies gathered for an engaging discussion on the unique experience of women in aerospace and how to navigate interpersonal, gender, and cultural dynamics for long-term professional and personal success.

“Throughout my career I have witnessed the power of diverse perspectives and how they drive innovation, tackle complex challenges, and lead technology through development,” said panel moderator Soumya Patnaik, a principal aerospace engineer at the Air Force Research Lab. “This evening is all about celebrating that diversity.”

Patnaik added that aerospace isn’t just about technology; “it’s about people – our ideas, our collaboration, and our shared drive to keep moving forward.”

How does one attract people of different backgrounds and experience? Sonya Smith said it starts by being inclusive. Smith is professor and executive director of the Research Institute for Tactical Autonomy at Howard University. “Make sure that you’re going beyond your comfort zone, to reach out to different populations, to people with different experiences.”

In academia, that might mean reaching out to community colleges instead of only four-year universities.

“I look to raise the voices of women and bring them to more leadership positions,” added panelist Melike Nikbay, professor of Aerospace Engineering and chair of the Astronautical Engineering Department at Istanbul Technical University.

Her outreach to young people extends to her role representing Turkey with NATO’s Science and Technology Organization Applied Vehicle Technology Panel, where she has served for over 16 years and contributes scientific work to the research task groups.

Clearly, the issue of diversity isn’t just about gender – it can be about diversity of experience, be it cultural differences or age. While sharing their own experiences, the panelists offered practical advice to current professionals and the up-and-coming generation of engineers.

“Success is defined by you, nobody else,” said panelist Anna-Maria McGowan, national senior engineer for complex system design at NASA Langley Research Center. “We are so much more than our job.”

McGowan, a native of the Caribbean, said she turned down promotions because she knew the new roles would take her away from her family. McGowan’s son, an undergraduate engineering student attending Pennsylvania State University, watched his mom on stage as he attended his first AIAA SciTech Forum.

Afterward he said, “What she said reflected a lot of how she raised me – it was very familiar. My mom really encouraged me to get into a lot of different things. I’ve lived in ice caves for days in Colorado; I’ve studied abroad in Singapore. I run a product design team right now where about half (the members) are underrepresented.”

Smith advised engineering graduates who are looking to start families to be selective about where they choose to work. “Look for organizations that support family-friendly policies. Choose carefully where you start your career.”

“Be who you are,” urged Karen Roth, deputy director of AFWERX, the innovation arm of the Department of the Air Force, who also serves as the president of the Society of Women Engineers. Roth said those times when she wasn’t her authentic self to fit in never worked out.

Embracing Diversity Makes Business Sense

“Wall Street requires organizations to have diverse boards because they know that diversity has a profitability impact,” noted Roth.

As a mother, she brings skills to the work setting that allow her to be a better communicator, which is helpful when dealing with people interpersonally who may not have strong communication skills. In those instances, “understanding context” proves extremely helpful.

McGowan acknowledged that conversations about diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility have become a challenging topic for everybody.

“People are afraid if they mention it, they’ll (be viewed as) ‘pulling the race or gender card,’” the NASA career professional said.

She urged people to resist staying silent and for leaders to have honest discussions with their teams.

“Let’s make the conversation about diversity comfortable and engaging. It may mean we need to educate ourselves. We as leaders and future leaders need to have those conversations.”

After the panel, first-time AIAA SciTech Forum attendee Funmi Adeeye said her decision to attend the panel was easy. “I get inspired whenever I see women doing something great.”

The Nigerian native and Stanford University engineering student said she liked the advice from one of the panelists – to accept that you will make mistakes and to extend grace to yourself and to others.

“Be kind to yourself. In school, there’s always a chance to make things better,” she said.

Also in the audience was Joseph Connolly, an aerospace engineer with NASA Glenn Research Center in Cleveland and former member of the AIAA Diversity Working Group.

“I’ve been coming to the Women at SciTech discussion every year since I’ve been attending the forum,” he said. “The panels are always phenomenal. There’s usually some inspirational and refreshing words of ways to work through tough situations, and how to make sure you’re giving yourself a nice balance between your family life and your work life.”

ORNL: Troubleshooting Turbulence – the Next ‘Killer App’ for Exascale Supercomputing?

By Anne Wainscott-Sargent, AIAA Communications Team

ORLANDO, Fla. – The aerospace community got a rare look at the capabilities and processing might of the world’s first exascale supercomputer during a plenary session at the 2025 AIAA SciTech Forum.

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Taking the stage in Orlando, Bronson Messer II, director of science for the Leadership Computing Facility at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in eastern Tennessee, admitted that while he is an astrophysicist, not an engineer, he shares common interests with the AIAA community: namely, solving tough problems in a world where the pace of technology advances continues to slow – even as the need for smarter, more advanced problem-solving is accelerating.

“I’ve heard throughout my career that Moore’s Law is dead. It’s finally actually true. This…doubling of performance…every 18 months has hit the end of the road,” he explained.

Messer said Moore’s Law’s demise requires scientists to think about how they’re going to reformulate problems and solve them in a much different way. And one of the biggest technical challenges facing the aerospace engineering community is turbulence.

“Turbulence may be the killer app for exascale computers,” Messer said.

Turbulence has a complex and unpredictable nature, making it difficult to accurately model and predict. That’s especially true for “clear-air turbulence,” which is invisible to radar. A 2023 study found that aircraft turbulence soared by up to 55% and some regions, including North America, the north Atlantic, and Europe, are set to experience several hundred percent more turbulence in the coming decade.

Enter Frontier, ORNL’s exascale supercomputer, which became operational in 2022 with 100 times the computing power found in typical universities, labs, or industrial environments. It can process billions upon billions of operations per second. Frontier’s processing speed is so powerful, it would take every person on Earth combined more than four years to do what the supercomputer can in one second.

“Frontier has more in common with the Hubble Space Telescope or the Large Hadron Collider (a particle accelerator) than with your laptop,” Messer emphasized.

Oak Ridge exascale supercomputer
Pictured above is the Frontier exascale supercomputer in Oak Ridge. Capable of performing two quintillion calculations per second, or two exaflops, Frontier features 74 Olympus rack HPE cabinets, each the size of a refrigerator and weighing 8,000 pounds. Each cabinet contains 128 AMD compute nodes. (Photo by ORNL)

Messer shared how GE Aerospace did one of the largest turbulence simulations ever attempted to study ways to negate the effect of turbulence on commercial flights. NASA is leveraging Frontier to understand the role of turbulence in flying and landing on Mars.

Concluding his talk, Messer invited proposals year-round from the audience to get time on the Frontier system, which is open to U.S. and most global researchers with some exceptions. He cautioned that only projects with the right level of computing complexity will benefit from exascale computing.

During the Q&A he said that his team has concluded an RFP for Discovery, the next exascale supercomputer that will replace Frontier.

When asked about exascale computing’s role in quantum computing, Messer said, “I’m a quantum advocate. My suspicion is over the next decade quantum computing will make the biggest impact on what I would call quantum problems – problems like computational chemistry, which may have an impact on things like aerospace.” He said there is a small team at ONRL looking at doing compressible hydrodynamics using quantum computing.

“I think the ability to do that on a very large scale is a way off,” he concluded.

“It was a very interesting talk,” said forum attendee Mike Ferguson, a flight test engineer at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab in Maryland. “I definitely think there are problems at our lab that could use that kind of computing infrastructure, but it would take some investigating and some actual deep thinking from all of us to figure that out.”

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