Aerospace Engineering

3 with ties to CU Engineering elected to National Academy of Engineering

emad5542 — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 17:19:25 +0000

3 with ties to CU Engineering elected to National Academy of Engineering emad5542 Thu, 02/12/2026 - 10:19

Dana Anderson, Iain Boyd and Bob Erickson are among the 130 scientists and engineers from around the country who will be inducted as members of the NAE at a meeting this fall.

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23 years after Columbia disaster, one-of-a-kind 'plasma tunnel' recreates extreme conditions spacecraft face upon reentry

Jeff Zehnder — Fri, 06 Feb 2026 19:27:03 +0000

23 years after Columbia disaster, one-of-a-kind 'plasma tunnel' recreates extreme conditions spacecraft face upon reentry Jeff Zehnder Fri, 02/06/2026 - 12:27

Picture a spacecraft returning to Earth after a long journey.

The vehicle slams into the planet’s atmosphere at roughly 17,000 miles per hour. A shockwave erupts. Molecules in the air are ripped apart, forming a plasma—a gas made of charged particles that can reach tens of thousands of degrees Fahrenheit, many times hotter than the surface of the sun.

The sight is spectacular to behold, but it’s also dangerous, said Hisham Ali, assistant professor in the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences.

The Columbia disaster is a tragic example. On Feb. 1, 2003, as the space shuttle reentered Earth’s atmosphere, plasma flooded into the vehicle through a defect in its shield of protective tiles. The shuttle disintegrated, and seven crewmembers, including 91��ý alumna Kalpna Chawla, died.

Illustration showing NASA's Orion spacecraft returning to Earth. (Credit: NASA)

Ali has dedicated his career to helping prevent those kinds of accidents.

“One of the most critical and dangerous phases of any space mission is when spacecraft reenter Earth’s atmosphere,” he said. “If we’re taking more humans to orbit through space tourism, we need to do that safely and effectively, and that’s a challenging problem.”

Scientists call this kind of flight “hypersonic.” Vehicles hit hypersonic speeds when they travel at Mach 5, or five times the speed of sound, and faster. At sea level, that’s a blistering 3,800 miles per hour.

Ali and his team are trying to recreate the wild physics that occur at those speeds, entirely from the safety of the ground.

To do that, the group opened a new kind of research facility on campus in late 2025. Known as an inductively coupled plasma tunnel, the facility generates streams of plasma that flow at speeds of hundreds to thousands of miles per hour and burn at up to 9,000 degrees Fahrenheit and hotter.

He and his students are using this one-of-a-kind facility to test how new materials and other technologies behave in such a treacherous environment. They’re also exploring an out-there idea: whether engineers can use powerful magnets to actually maneuver vehicles flying at incredible speeds, something that’s not possible today.

“There’s not a chamber exactly like this anywhere in the world,” Ali said.

A lab that glows

That machine is coming to life now in a windowless lab on 91��ý's East Campus. There, a 40-kilowatt generator roars on, and it’s hard to hear anything over the sound.

Ali and a small team of graduate students monitor a series of readouts on a computer terminal. Beside them are the main components of the group’s plasma wind tunnel: The first is a tube made of quartz glass, known as a nozzle, which is about the size and shape of a wine bottle. It feeds into a much larger chamber that’s sealed with stainless steel several inches thick.

“I think we’re ready to light,” Ali says to his team.

In an instant, a lavender-colored light blinks on in the quartz-glass tube. The eerie glow comes from a plasma, like the kind that threatens spacecraft when they return to Earth.

From there, the plasma rushes into the metal chamber, which you can peer into through a porthole window. Inside, every surface radiates orange from the heat.

To simulate the conditions of hypersonic flight the group needs two things: speed and heat.

To build up speed, he and his students inject a stream of argon gas into their tunnel. A powerful vacuum system then sucks that gas through the tunnel—and fast. The vacuum can pull more than 20,000 cubic meters of air per hour, making it one of the most powerful machines of its kind at any university in the United States.

The heat comes next. The researchers hit their plasma with strong radio waves that flip back and forth. Those waves generate electric currents within the gas, eventually causing it to explode into a plasma. Once the argon is lit, the team can then inject regular, Earth air into the tunnel.

“My students and I worked a lot of late hours to make this happen,” Ali said.

Plasma flows into a chamber made from stainless steel several inches thick.

Staying cool

Ali’s own passion for hypersonic flight began on a school trip.

The engineer grew up in Alabama, and when he was in fifth grade, he attended Space Camp at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville. There, a guide pulled out a tile similar to the ones NASA engineers once used to shield space shuttles from heat during reentry.

“They put a blowtorch on one side and let us put our hands on the other. You could still feel that it was cool,” Ali said. “I thought that was very interesting.”

It kicked off Ali’s lifelong dream of helping humans explore the solar system—and come back safely.

The new plasma tunnel brings him one step closer to that goal.

Ali explained that he and his students can use a metal arm to lower almost anything—like a new type of heat-resistant material or design for a sensor—into the flow of their plasma. The streaming plasma instantly forms a shock wave around the obstruction. The team can then test how technologies behave under those kinds of extreme conditions.

The researchers have already collaborated with one aerospace company to test a new type of heat-resistant material. They have plans to work with several more companies in the months ahead.

But the facility does more than just capture Earth’s atmosphere in a bottle. It can also simulate the atmosphere of many other planets. What would happen, for example, if a space capsule rammed into Mars’ thin, carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere?

“Once our plasma is lit, we can inject carbon dioxide and create a plasma made of flowing carbon dioxide, similar to what a spacecraft might experience at Mars,” Ali said.

Hisham Ali inspects his plasma wind tunnel.

Room to maneuver

The team is tackling what might be the most persistent challenge of hypersonic flight: Once a vehicle hits those kinds of speeds, it’s nearly impossible to steer. That’s because anything that sticks out from a plane or spacecraft, like wings or flaps, would burn up almost at once. As a result, pilots can’t easily change a spacecraft’s trajectory after it reenters Earth’s orbit if something goes wrong.

Ali’s team hopes to get around that limitation with the help of an unusual property: magnetism.

Plasmas, Ali noted, are made of charged particles. If you have a powerful enough magnet, you can potentially change the flow of those charged particles, much like how you can use toy magnet to move around iron filings.

The researchers envision that future spacecraft could employ ultra-strong magnets to push on the plasma shock waves around them. In the process, they might build up enough force to turn—at least a little bit.

The team will soon start running experiments to test that idea.

For now, Ali is excited to see the culmination of a dream that began with a blowtorch all those years ago.

“Increasing humankind’s understanding of our world and others is something I’ve always found really inspiring,” he said.

Known as an inductively coupled plasma tunnel, the facility in Hisham Ali's lab generates streams of plasma that flow at speeds of hundreds to thousands of miles per hour and burn at up to 9,000 degrees Fahrenheit and hotter.

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Conducting space research as an undergrad

Jeff Zehnder — Mon, 26 Jan 2026 18:34:50 +0000

Conducting space research as an undergrad Jeff Zehnder Mon, 01/26/2026 - 11:34

Diana Hernandez, a sophomore and first-generation student at the University of Colorado Boulder, is conducting research on space dust impacts using data from NASA’s Parker Solar Probe (PSP). As a Lattice Scholar, she models impact data collected by PSP’s magnetometer instruments, which detect signals from dust collisions. This work is part of the Discovery Learning Apprenticeship and Fundamentals of Undergraduate Research Program, offering hands-on research opportunities.

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Shaping the Future of Aerospace: Smead PhD Scholars

Michelle Wiese — Thu, 30 Oct 2025 23:17:14 +0000

Shaping the Future of Aerospace: Smead PhD Scholars Michelle Wiese Thu, 10/30/2025 - 17:17

The University of Colorado Boulder’s Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences is pleased to welcome the 2025 PhD Scholars into The Smead Program.

They join the cohort of current Smead Scholars to explore, achieve and lead in aerospace engineering sciences.

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Skydiving into a PhD

Jeff Zehnder — Thu, 16 Oct 2025 19:07:56 +0000

Skydiving into a PhD Jeff Zehnder Thu, 10/16/2025 - 13:07

Jeff Zehnder

Adam Harris is advancing the frontiers of aerodynamics as a non-traditional student, finishing up a doctoral program in which he never expected to enroll.

“I’m writing computational fluid dynamics and finite element codes to study flow control by phononic materials and structures. A phonon is the quantum of vibrational energy, a quasi-particle that could give birth to a whole new species of technology,” Harris said.

A PhD student in the materials science and engineering program, Harris began his college journey in 2012 as a psychology major, but his time at 91��ý did not last long.

“I didn’t show up to classes and just really didn't care. I was placed on academic probation my first semester and academic suspension my second,” Harris said.

A native of Miami, he elected to stay in Boulder, working in construction and landscaping. In 2014, Harris enrolled at Front Range Community College for an associate’s degree in business.

Skydiving Hobby

Harris also started skydiving as a hobby, hanging out at Vance Brand Airport in Longmont, making up to 10 jumps a day. Eventually, he was hired there for a paid ground crew position.

“I was surrounded by people who were monitoring weather, maintaining aircraft, and discussing flight mechanics. I started teaching myself basic aerodynamics, watching TED talks and physics documentaries online. It all became more and more interesting to me,” he said.

After finishing at Front Range, Harris decided to continue onto a four-year business degree at 91��ý. Because of his past suspension, enrolling required an appointment with an admissions advisor. The meeting would change the direction of his life.

Changing Gears

“I told her about all the science, engineering, and physics I was being exposed to. She looked at me suspiciously and said, ‘Are you sure you want to study business?’ Nope, put me down for physics,” Harris said.

He steamrolled through his courses, earning As and Bs in subjects where he had previously shown little interest. In the five years since his first stint at 91��ý, Harris had grown significantly.

“Turns out I really love math. I think my success was a product of motivation and how much I enjoyed where I was, the people around me, what I was learning, and relevance to my passions. I have a GPS in my skydiving helmet and I would always try to connect course concepts to data acquired from wingsuit flights,” he said.

As he was completing his bachelor’s, a connection with Mahmoud Hussein, a professor in the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences, opened the door to graduate school.

Graduate School

“I was still enjoying classes but I paid for undergrad myself, so I didn’t want to continue accumulating debt. I started talking to Mahmoud, and when I learned engineering PhD programs cover tuition and living expenses, there was no question. What an opportunity,” Harris said.

Hussein became his graduate advisor as Harris earned two master’s degrees – in aerospace and materials science. He expects to finish his PhD in materials science next spring.

His dissertation is centered on phononic subsurfaces (PSubs), which could lead to radical increases in fuel economy for jet aircraft and hypersonic vehicles. It has been a focus of Hussein’s lab for 15 years, beginning at the theoretical level and now approaching the applied stage, thanks in part to a major Office of Naval Research grant awarded last year.

“This started with purely computational work and now we’re 3D printing PSubs. We can validate the PSub’s tuned frequency response with a laser vibrometer, and we have candidate prototypes that yield the response we expect. We’re going to begin the first wind tunnel tests in collaboration with the Experimental Aerodynamics Laboratory at 91��ý very soon,” Harris said.

What's Next?

As he writes his dissertation, Harris’s research background offers a wealth of career opportunities, but he is hoping for a particular dream job that would combine fluid dynamics and computational modeling with his love of skydiving.

It may sound like a fantasy. It is not.

“There’s a company in California that builds parachutes used for space craft atmospheric re-entry,” Harris said. “The job description is everything I’m doing at 91��ý, plus a requirement of parachute rigging experience, which I have.”

Wherever Harris lands, he is a long way from his beginnings in Boulder as an 18-year-old psych major.

“I think this is where I was supposed to be all along,” Harris said. “I just wasn’t aware of it back then. The synchronicity is really cool.”

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Robot regret: New research helps robots make safer decisions around humans

Jeff Zehnder — Fri, 29 Aug 2025 16:28:28 +0000

Robot regret: New research helps robots make safer decisions around humans Jeff Zehnder Fri, 08/29/2025 - 10:28

Imagine for a moment that you’re in an auto factory. A robot and a human are working next to each other on the production line. The robot is busy rapidly assembling car doors while the human runs quality control, inspecting the doors for damage and making sure they come together as they should.

Robots and humans can make formidable teams in manufacturing, health care and numerous other industries. While the robot might be quicker and more effective at monotonous, repetitive tasks like assembling large auto parts, the person can excel at certain tasks that are more complex or require more dexterity.

But there can be a dark side to these robot-human interactions. People are prone to making mistakes and acting unpredictably, which can create unexpected situations that robots aren’t prepared to handle. The results can be tragic.

New and emerging research could change the way robots handle the uncertainty that comes hand-in-hand with human interactions. Morteza Lahijanian, an associate professor in 91��ý’s Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences, develops processes that let robots make safer decisions around humans while still trying to complete their tasks efficiently.

From left, engineering professor Morteza Lahijanian and graduate student Karan Muvvala watch as a robotic arm completes a task using wooden blocks. (Credit: Casey Cass)

In a new study presented at the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence in August 2025, Lahijanian and graduate students Karan Muvvala and Qi Heng Ho devised new algorithms that help robots create the best possible outcomes from their actions in situations that carry some uncertainty and risk.

“How do we go from very structured environments where there is no human, where the robots are doing everything by themselves, to unstructured environments where there are a lot of uncertainties and other agents?” Lahijanian asked.

“If you’re a robot, you have to be able to interact with others. You have to put yourself out there and take a risk and see what happens. But how do you make that decision, and how much risk do you want to tolerate?”

Similar to humans, robots have mental models that they use to make decisions. When working with a human, a robot will try to predict the person’s actions and respond accordingly. The robot is optimized for completing a task—assembling an auto part, for example—but ideally, it will also take other factors into consideration.

In the new study, the research team drew upon game theory, a mathematical concept that originated in economics, to develop the new algorithms for robots. Game theory analyzes how companies, governments and individuals make decisions in a system where other “players” are also making choices that affect the ultimate outcome.

In robotics, game theory conceptualizes a robot as being one of numerous players in a game that it’s trying to win. For a robot, “winning” is completing a task successfully—but winning is never guaranteed when there’s a human in the mix, and keeping the human safe is also a top priority.

So instead of trying to guarantee a robot will always win, the researchers proposed the concept of a robot finding an “admissible strategy.” Using such a strategy, a robot will accomplish as much of its task as possible while also minimizing any harm, including to a human.

“In choosing a strategy, you don't want the robot to seem very adversarial,” said Lahijanian. “In order to give that softness to the robot, we look at the notion of regret. Is the robot going to regret its action in the future? And in optimizing for the best action at the moment, you try to take an action that you won't regret.”

Let’s go back to the auto factory where the robot and human are working side-by-side. If the person makes mistakes or is not cooperative, using the researchers’ algorithms, a robot could take matters into its own hands. If the person is making mistakes, the robot will try to fix these without endangering the person. But if that doesn’t work, the robot could, for example, pick up what it’s working on and take it to a safer area to finish its task.

Karan Muvvala watches the robotic arm pick up a blue block. (Credit: Casey Cass)

Much like a chess champion who thinks several turns ahead about an opponent’s possible moves, a robot will try to anticipate what a person will do and stay several steps ahead of them, Lahijanian said.

But the goal is not to attempt the impossible and perfectly predict a person’s actions. Instead, the goal is to create robots that put people’s safety first.

“If you want to have collaboration between a human and a robot, the robot has to adjust itself to the human. We don't want humans to adjust themselves to the robot,” he said. “You can have a human who is a novice and doesn't know what they're doing, or you can have a human who is an expert. But as a robot, you don't know which kind of human you're going to get. So you need to have a strategy for all possible cases.”

And when robots can work safely alongside humans, they can enhance people's lives and provide real and tangible benefits to society.

As more industries embrace robots and artificial intelligence, there are many lingering questions about what AI will ultimately be capable of doing, whether it will be able to take over the jobs that people have historically done, and what that could mean for humanity. But there are upsides to robots being able to take on certain types of jobs. They could work in fields with labor shortages, such as health care for older populations, and physically challenging jobs that may take a toll on workers’ health.

Lahijanian also believes that, when they're used correctly, robots and AI can enhance human talents and expand what we're capable of doing.

"Human-robot collaboration is about combining complementary strengths: humans contribute intelligence, judgment, and flexibility, while robots offer precision, strength, and reliability," he said.

"Together, they can achieve more than either could alone, safely and efficiently."

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Enhancing orbital safety with better space weather predictions

Jeff Zehnder — Fri, 11 Jul 2025 18:40:25 +0000

Enhancing orbital safety with better space weather predictions Jeff Zehnder Fri, 07/11/2025 - 12:40

Jeff Zehnder

Anant Telikicherla is developing new instrumentation for an upcoming sub-orbital rocket flight.

Surrounded by racks of electronics equipment, tools, and pieces of an aluminum rocket body – the laboratory could be mistaken for a mad scientist’s lair – Telikicherla is working on an instrument he hopes can help provide advance warnings for solar flares.

“These flares are one of the most powerful explosions in the solar system,” said Telikicherla, a PhD student in the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder. “Flares release an insane amount of energy that can reach Earth in eight minutes and large eruptive flares are often associated with energetic particle events that are a radiation risk to astronauts and can be really damaging to satellites.”

As a student, Telikicherla is co-advised by two leading researchers, Tom Woods, a senior research scientist at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, and Bob Marshall, an associate professor in aerospace.

Flare prediction is an active area of research around the world, and Telikicherla is hopeful the instrument he and Woods have been developing could eventually provide 10-15 minutes advance warning of flares. It is a short period of time, but any additional notice would be beneficial for space weather operations.

The basis of the instrument, called the Solar Extreme Ultraviolet Spectrograph and High Energy Imager (SEUSHI), derives from a paper Telikicherla published on solar flare onsets in The Astrophysical Journal. SEUSHI is slated to fly next spring aboard a sounding rocket.

Sounding rockets are sub-orbital flights that soar to the edge of space and offer engineers and scientists an opportunity to conduct short duration experiments for a much lower cost than those on full size rockets.

“Our group tries to build new instruments to better understand the sun, and hopefully this flight demonstrates the technology and then we’ll propose it as a long-term project aboard a future small satellite,” Telikicherla said.

A native of Dehli in India, Telikicherla has been fascinated by space since a young age. He earned his bachelor’s at the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology, a university run by India’s national space agency, and then worked at the Indian Space Research Organization’s Human Spaceflight Center for two years.

The desire for advanced research drew him back to school.

“My work was fun, but I had a longing to do more fundamental research, to go beyond what a normal industry job does,” he said.

He earned a master’s at the University of Alberta. There, he worked on a different sounding rocket instrument and earned first prize at the AIAA SmallSat conference student paper competition for a submission based on his master’s thesis.

Telikicherla wearing a clean room "bunny suit."

For his PhD, Telikicherla was drawn to 91��ý, where he had already spent time at as an undergrad in a summer exchange program called INSPIRE.

A collaboration with the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP), INSPIRE offers students from around the world the chance to come to Boulder to design and build a small satellite. It was where he was first introduced to Woods’ research.

“He was the PI on one of the satellite’s instruments and as we were building it, I realized I was more interested in the instrument than the larger spacecraft. That sounded more exciting, making new measurements of things no one has ever looked at before,” Telikicherla said “I told him I wanted to analyze the solar data after it launched and he said absolutely, even though I didn’t have a solar physics background.”

Now a year into his PhD program, Telikicherla splits his time on campus between the lab and conducting observational analysis of existing solar flare data.

“I can download data in real-time from satellites using LASP’s downlink and that’s awesome,” Telikicherla said. “Then, let’s say I get bored staring at my computer for hours, I can go work in the lab instead. I get to do both, and I feel that’s very enjoyable from a PhD student life point of view.”

SEUSHI is scheduled to launch aboard LASP’s EVE Rocket Program in April 2026 from White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.

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Eleven engineering students earn prestigious National Science Foundation fellowships

Jeff Zehnder — Tue, 01 Jul 2025 15:37:47 +0000

Eleven engineering students earn prestigious National Science Foundation fellowships Jeff Zehnder Tue, 07/01/2025 - 09:37

The National Science Foundation has bestowed 11 prestigious Graduate Research Fellowship Program awards to University of Colorado Boulder engineering students.

The national awards recognize and support outstanding grad students from across the country in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields who are pursuing research-based master’s and doctoral degrees.

Awardees receive a $37,000 annual stipend and cost of education allowance for the next three years as well as professional development opportunities.

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Engineering double major and student leader of the year

Jeff Zehnder — Tue, 06 May 2025 15:20:36 +0000

Engineering double major and student leader of the year Jeff Zehnder Tue, 05/06/2025 - 09:20

Jeff Zehnder

Pore (right) being recognized as the Boettcher Student Leader of the Year.

Aaditya Pore is an engineering senior double majoring in aerospace and computer science. He is an extremely active student, serving as senior class president, competing in the Daniels Fund National Ethics Case Competition and earning the 2025 Boettcher Student Leader of the Year award.

As he prepares to graduate, he reflects on his time at 91��ý and how he juggles all of his classes and extracurricular activities:

What does it mean to you to be recognized as Boettcher Student Leader of the Year?

Gaining this recognition is such an amazing culminating achievement for my time at CU. Majoring in engineering, leadership isn’t always directed as a focus, and there’s not as much representation of engineers in campus wide leadership. Having had the chance to not participate in shared governance at CU but also make a meaningful contribution to bettering campus has been an opportunity I will cherish for the rest of my life.

Most importantly, being able to have gained support from my community, inside and outside of the College of Engineering, has enabled me to reach this point. I see this accomplishment as a tribute to those who contributed so much to me during my journey – advisors, professors, mentors, friends, and family.

You are a double major in aerospace and computer science and are the Senior Class Council President. When do you sleep?

Whether it was being involved in CU Student Government as the Legislative Council President, the President’s Leadership Class as their Professional Development Coordinator, CU Milana as a member of the dance team, or the Senior Class Council as President, my involvements have indubitably been the most important part of my time in Boulder.

I’ve found that when you value something, you can find time to prioritize it, regardless of how busy your schedule gets. Of course, this comes with sacrifices. There were many days where I stay up far too late to do homework, missing out on fun memories with friends or adequate sleep to prepare myself for the next day. But, those were all costs I was willing to take, and steps towards the balance I desired in my life.

My goal with an optimal balance was always one of playing roughly just as hard as I worked. Sleep wasn’t always on that priority list, and often got overlooked. Thought, I look back at my time over the last four years and feel content: with the memories I made, the impact I had, and the great experiences I’ll remember moving forward.

What drew you to engineering as opposed to another field of study?

For as long as I can remember, I wanted to work on rocket ships. Something about the mystery of the night sky always drew my interest. When I was in kindergarten, we had an assignment to make a poster about ourselves – our family, our hobbies, etc. There was a section about what we wanted to be when we grew up, and I still remember writing ‘NASA Scientist’ in the box.

Thankfully, through the Pathways program at NASA, that dream has come true, and it is in large part because of the Aero program at CU. The quality and ranking of Smead Aerospace brought me here from Kansas, and wanting to be at the forefront of integrating software and hardware development led me to take on CS as well.

I’ve dabbled in other programs in my time at CU: Political Science, Leadership Studies, and more; but engineering has always felt like home. Being able to solve the complex problems we do in the manner we’re enabled to is an experience that’s hard to get anywhere else, and I’m forever grateful for my decision to follow this path.

As class president, you will be speaking at commencement. Few students have the opportunity to address the entire student body. What do you hope to share?

I hope my speech is a source of motivation for those that come after me. In today’s political climate, effective leadership is more important than ever. Not just in a political space, necessarily, but even in our day-to-day: in our workplaces, our communities, even our homes.

Being a leader isn’t just about making large scale change and solving world peace; rather, being a good leader can just mean being the person that puts a smile on everyone’s face every day; being a source of support for a community; or, just doing the right thing whenever you can.

I aspire for my success and words to show other students on campus that anyone can be a leader, and in the face of the division and polarization that we see in our society today, it is imperative that we all – regardless of background - step up and play a role in leading our community to prosperity. Moreover, coming from an engineering background, I hope it serves as a sign to those who may also be in STEM but aspire to do more on the leadership front. We are all equally equipped to be change makers, it’s just a matter of acting on that potential.

Anyone can make an impact on the world, and the skills that engineering gives you makes that an easier feat to accomplish."

When did you feel like you hit your stride or felt like you were "officially" an engineer.

Two moments stand out to me. The first was actually before I even came to CU. I graduated in 2020, right when COVID started to shut down our communities. A friend and I quickly acted to try and see how we could help our local area, even if we were just high school kids. We quickly made a nonprofit that 3D printed personal protective equipment for healthcare facilities that needed them, and quickly patched a gap in supply chains that would otherwise cripple their services.

Over about two and a half years, we produced and delivered over 8,000 units of PPE to hospitals nationwide, from California to New York. In that moment, even though I hadn’t even started an engineering degree yet, I learned that anyone can make an impact on the world, and the skills that engineering gives you makes that an easier feat to accomplish. It validated that engineering was the right path for me, and I’ve been on it ever since.

The second would be when I started working at NASA. I’ve done two rotations there now, and each and every one has been one of the most professionally motivating experiences I’ve ever had. Being able to see the knowledge I’ve gained from my classes being put to work to pushing society’s frontier in space has been eye opening, and I can’t wait to continue to grow on my journey in my further work.

A project I worked on during my first internship at NASA is going to the ISS soon, and I’m so excited to see what accomplishments come next.

What accomplishment are you most proud of, either academically or personally?

By far my most proud accomplishment so far has been helping three other students, two from CU, get into the NASA Pathways program. I’m a firm believer that our legacy is defined not by what we accomplish, but rather, by what we helps others achieve.

My mom always instilled in me the value of giving back to your community, even when it may feel inconvenient, and I’m glad to have acted to have acted on that advice.

My greatest memories at CU will not be tied to things I did, but those that I worked with, made smile, helped succeed, and built long lasting relationships with.

I look forward to continuing to help facilitate the growth of those that come after me in any way possible as I progress through my professional and personal journey. I implore others to try it out, as well. Mentorship is an unbelievably rewarding journey, for yourself, and for those that you help.

Aaditya Pore is an engineering senior double majoring in aerospace and computer science. He is an extremely active student, serving as senior class president, competing in the...

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Aaditya Pore at Machu Picchu.

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91��ý leading 10-university uncrewed aerial systems communications project

Jeff Zehnder — Thu, 10 Apr 2025 21:15:44 +0000

91��ý leading 10-university uncrewed aerial systems communications project Jeff Zehnder Thu, 04/10/2025 - 15:15

Jeff Zehnder

Eric Frew is heading a major project to improve drone communications in anticipation of a future when autonomous aircraft regularly whizz overhead for everything from product deliveries to emergency response.

A professor in the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder, Frew is the principal investigator of an $8 million, four-year NASA University Leadership Initiative grant to ensure safe and assured operation of commercial autonomous aircraft in populated areas.

“These are complex scenarios -- a drone flying from Denver International Airport to Boulder to drop off a package or using drones to monitor wildfires. Consider the benefit if the Boulder Fire Department could dispatch a drone the moment there’s an incident t so it gets there before police or fire crews,” Frew said.

Communications with consumer-grade quad copters are fairly standardized, but Frew’s team will be studying a much more complex problem – drones that navigate miles from their operator across challenging terrain where line-of-sight communication with a base station is no longer possible.

In such cases, cellular networks are the most likely solution for controlling the drone, but that presents unique challenges.

“Wireless communication is hard,” Frew said. “We’ve all had cell phone signals drop out. That’s fine on the phone with a family member. But if you’re commanding a flying drone, that’s a problem.”

The project team comprises some of the best minds in drones, radio signaling and computer science across 10 universities and colleges; the Center for Autonomous Air Mobility and Sensing research partnership; Boeing subsidiary Aurora Flight Sciences; and the nonprofit Charles Stark Draper Laboratory.

Ismail Guvenc is a partner on the project. An electrical engineering professor at North Carolina State University, he leads a major aerial experimentation laboratory that will offer the team opportunities to develop and test uncrewed aerial system concepts in a real-world outdoor testbed.

“This is advancing the state of the art in an area of critical and timely significance for the United States. We’ll be modeling the behavior of agents, interference, and data in hybrid airborne-terrestrial networks and their impact on the overall performance of the communication network. We will also be supporting real-world experiments and testing needs of project partners at Aerial Experimentation and Research Platform for Advanced Wireless (AERPAW),” Guvenc said.

Part of the research will focus on designing flight corridors that ensure continued communication. In the case of a trip from DIA to Boulder, that could mean designing a pathway that stays close to cell towers, rather than following the most direct route. Another possibility is using multiple drones as a mesh relay network.

“The transmission would multi-hop back through each drone. We can’t control the ground communications, but we can exploit our own,” Frew said.

Relay networks will be particularly important in sparsely populated areas with fewer cell towers, like during wildfire response in the Rocky Mountains.

This is part of a larger vision of how our work can help society. The goal is to provide tools to industry to understand and exploit the dynamic communications environment in urban, suburban, rural and remote areas.” - Eric Frew

“How do we organize stakeholders in that environment? We want to be able to manage team formations, routing and planning so we can work in a hybrid communications system that alternates between air-to-air and air-to-ground communications seamlessly,” Frew said.

Managing that complex interplay will be an area of study for multiple partners on the project, including Philip Brown, an assistant professor in computer science at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs. His work focuses on using game theory to inform the design of networked control systems.

“My lab studies the way that network structure impacts team performance for loosely connected teams, which is what a group of drones are in this case. We’re evaluating and predicting the performance of network structures, and also using network structures to inform the decisions made by individual autonomous aircraft,” Brown said.

A key objective of the project is technology transfer to industry. While some grants focus more on early stage research, Frew emphasized their plan to develop software and data to assist business and government going forward.

“This is part of a larger vision of how our work can help society,” Frew said. “The goal is to provide tools to industry to understand and exploit the dynamic communications environment in urban, suburban, rural and remote areas.”

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