Happening @ Michigan https://events.umich.edu/list/rss RSS Feed for Happening @ Michigan Events at the University of Michigan. Chair's Distinguished Lecture: Space Debris Propagation, Prediction, and Removal (January 23, 2020 4:00am) https://events.umich.edu/event/71767 71767-17879419@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Thursday, January 23, 2020 4:00am
Location: Francois-Xavier Bagnoud Building
Organized By: Aerospace Engineering

Xiaoli Bai
Assistant Professor
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

Since the launch of the first satellite (Sputnik 1) in 1957, humans have created a lot of objects in orbit around Earth. The number of space objects larger than 10 cm is presently approaching 21,000, the estimated population of objects between 1 and 10cm is about 500, 000, and for objects smaller than 1cm the number exceeds 100 million. Both the number of space objects and the number of conflicts between these objects are increasing exponentially.

This talk overviews the research we have been pursuing on to address the challenges posed by the growth of space debris. We will first introduce the Modified Chebyshev-Picard Iteration (MCPI) Methods, which are a set of parallel-structured methods for solution of initial value problems and boundary value problems. The MCPI methods have been recommended as the “promising and parallelizable method for orbit propagation” by the National Research Council. The talk will then highlight our recent results to develop a methodology to predict RSOs trajectories both higher accuracy and higher reliability than those of the current methods. Inspired by the learning theory through which the models are learnt based on large amounts of data and the prediction can be conducted without explicitly modeling space objects and space environment, we are working on a new orbit prediction framework that integrates physics-based orbit prediction algorithms with a learning process. Last, we will present our research in autonomous, performance-driven, and online trajectory planning and tracking of space robotics for space debris removal with the goal to solve the problem in real time.

About the speaker...

Dr. Xiaoli Bai is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. She obtained her PhD degree of Aerospace Engineering from Texas A&M University. Prior to joining Rutgers, she was a research scientist at Optimal Synthesis Inc. in Los Altos, California, working with NASA Langley and NASA Ames on advanced research and development projects in the area of air traffic management systems. One consequence of her dissertation is a set of methods which significantly enhances the fundamental processes underlying the maintenance of space debris catalogs. Her current research interests include astrodynamics and Space Situational Awareness; spacecraft guidance, control, and space robotics; and Unmanned Aerial Vehicle navigation and control. Dr. Bai was a recipient of The 2019 NASA Early Career Faculty Award, The 2016 Air Force Office of Scientific Research Young Investigator Research Program Award, Outstanding Young Aerospace Engineer Award from Texas A&M University in 2018, A. Water Tyson Assistant Professor Award from Rutgers in 2018, Amelia Earhart Fellowship, AIAA Foundation John Leland Atwood Graduate Award, and JPL Graduate Fellow. Dr. Bai have published 30 journal articles since she joined Rutgers in July 2014 (for a total of 38 journal papers). Her research has have been funded by NASA, AFOSR, Air Force STTR, and ONR.Bio: Dr. Xiaoli Bai is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. She obtained her PhD degree of Aerospace Engineering from Texas A&M University. Prior to joining Rutgers, she was a research scientist at Optimal Synthesis Inc. in Los Altos, California, working with NASA Langley and NASA Ames on advanced research and development projects in the area of air traffic management systems. One consequence of her dissertation is a set of methods which significantly enhances the fundamental processes underlying the maintenance of space debris catalogs. Her current research interests include astrodynamics and Space Situational Awareness; spacecraft guidance, control, and space robotics; and Unmanned Aerial Vehicle navigation and control. Dr. Bai was a recipient of The 2019 NASA Early Career Faculty Award, The 2016 Air Force Office of Scientific Research Young Investigator Research Program Award, Outstanding Young Aerospace Engineer Award from Texas A&M University in 2018, A. Water Tyson Assistant Professor Award from Rutgers in 2018, Amelia Earhart Fellowship, AIAA Foundation John Leland Atwood Graduate Award, and JPL Graduate Fellow. Dr. Bai have published 30 journal articles since she joined Rutgers in July 2014 (for a total of 38 journal papers). Her research has have been funded by NASA, AFOSR, Air Force STTR, and ONR.

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Presentation Mon, 20 Jan 2020 13:02:09 -0500 2020-01-23T04:00:00-05:00 2020-01-23T17:30:00-05:00 Francois-Xavier Bagnoud Building Aerospace Engineering Presentation Xiaoli Bai
Exploring Pluto and Beyond (January 23, 2020 6:30pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/71483 71483-17834193@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Thursday, January 23, 2020 6:30pm
Location: GG Brown Laboratory
Organized By: American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics

Alice Bowman, of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory and New Horizons Mission Operations Manager (MOM), talks about the voyage of NASA’s historic mission to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt– which culminated with the first flight past the distant dwarf planet on July 14, 2015 and the first encounter with a Kuiper Belt object (KBO) on January 1, 2019.

She’ll speak about this continuing journey through the eyes of the APL mission operations team and describe some of the technical, scientific, and personal challenges of piloting the New Horizons spacecraft across the solar system on its voyage to the farthest reaches of the planetary frontier.

Food and beverages will be provided.

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Lecture / Discussion Wed, 15 Jan 2020 14:30:58 -0500 2020-01-23T18:30:00-05:00 2020-01-23T20:00:00-05:00 GG Brown Laboratory American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Lecture / Discussion Alice Bowman, Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab, New Horizons Mission Operations Manager
Kabamba Award Lecture: Warmstarting Numerical Methods in Model Predictive Control (January 28, 2020 3:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/72123 72123-17940001@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Tuesday, January 28, 2020 3:00pm
Location: Francois-Xavier Bagnoud Building
Organized By: Aerospace Engineering

Dominic Liao-McPherson
PhD Candidate
UM Aerospace Engineering

Model Predictive Control (MPC) is a powerful control methodology that constructs a control law from the solution of a receding horizon optimal control problem (OCP). MPC can systemically handle nonlinearities, coupling, and constraints but can be difficult to implement because of the need to solve non-linear OCPs online. One way to reduce this computational burden is to exploit that in MPC one solves a sequence of OCPs and reuse information from previous problems, a practice commonly called "warmstarting". In this talk, I discuss the theoretical, algorithmic, and practical application of warmstarting in MPC. First, I introduce Time-distributed Optimization (TDO), a unifying framework for studying the system theoretic consequence of warmstarting, which we use to derive sufficient conditions for stability and robustness. Second, I present FBstab, a quadratic programming algorithm with strong robustness properties that is designed to be warmstarted and can exploit the structure of optimal control problems. Finally, I illustrate the applicability of the these methods in the real-world, using diesel engine, autonomous driving, and guided parafoil examples.

About the Speaker...

Dominic Liao-McPherson obtained his BASc (with High Honours) in Engineering Science, Aerospace Option, from the University of Toronto in 2015. Since 2015 he has been a PhD student at the University of Michigan, in the department of aerospace engineering. His research interests lie in model predictive control, reference governors, trajectory optimization, and numerical methods with applications in aerospace, robotics, and autonomous vehicles. He received the 2019 Prof. Kabamba award and a predoctoral fellowship from the University of Michigan and was a finalist in the 2019 ECC best student paper competition.

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Presentation Mon, 27 Jan 2020 14:31:33 -0500 2020-01-28T15:00:00-05:00 2020-01-28T16:00:00-05:00 Francois-Xavier Bagnoud Building Aerospace Engineering Presentation Dominic
Chair's Distinguished Lecture: Understanding the Reactivity of Nonequilibrium Molecular Plasmas for Propulsion and Power Applications (January 30, 2020 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/72122 72122-17939994@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Thursday, January 30, 2020 4:00pm
Location: Francois-Xavier Bagnoud Building
Organized By: Aerospace Engineering

Igor V. Adamovich
Professor
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Chemical Physics Graduate Program
Ohio State University

Understanding the kinetics of molecular energy transfer and chemical reactions in nonequilibrium reactive flows and low-temperature plasmas is critical for a number of engineering applications, such as hypersonic aerothermodynamics and propulsion, high-speed flow control, plasma-assisted combustion, and plasma-enhanced catalysis. Non-intrusive laser diagnostics is critical for probing these environments, where chemical reaction pathways and internal energy relaxation are strongly affected by the applied electric field and by the number densities of excited molecular and atomic species. This talk presents recent results on characterization of reacting molecular plasmas in a slow flow reactor and in a supersonic wind tunnel. The plasmas are sustained by a ns pulse discharge combined with DC or RF voltage waveforms, which improves the plasma stability at high pressures and enables selective generation of vibrationally and electronically excited molecules, as well as atomic species and radicals. Electric field, gas temperature, vibrational level populations of diatomic molecules, and number densities of excited metastable electronic states in these plasmas are measured by Electric Field Induced Second Harmonic (EFISH) generation, Coherent Anti-Stokes Ramas Scattering (CARS), Cavity Ring Down Spectroscopy (CRDS), and Tunable Diode Laser Absorption Spectroscopy (TDLAS). These data provide detailed insight into kinetics of ionization, vibrational relaxation, quenching of excited electronic states, molecular dissociation, energy thermalization (“rapid heating”), and plasma chemical reactions, as well as their coupling to the reacting flow.

About the speaker...

Research interests: kinetics of high-speed nonequilibrium reacting flows and low-temperature plasmas, molecular energy transfer, plasma-assisted combustion, plasma flow control, plasma-enhanced catalysis, molecular lasers, laser diagnostics, and kinetic modeling.

Associate Editor, Plasma Sources Science and Technology. Associate Fellow, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA). Publications include over 150 archival journal papers, over 300 conference papers, over 90 invited lectures at national and international conferences, and 2 patents.

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Presentation Mon, 27 Jan 2020 14:25:29 -0500 2020-01-30T16:00:00-05:00 2020-01-30T17:30:00-05:00 Francois-Xavier Bagnoud Building Aerospace Engineering Presentation Adamovich
Aerospace Department Seminar Series: Aerospace - Beyond the Airframers (January 31, 2020 1:30pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/72216 72216-17957435@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, January 31, 2020 1:30pm
Location: BBB
Organized By: Aerospace Engineering

Juan de Bedout
Vice President of Advanced Technology
Collins Aerospace

Overview of the products and some of the technology focus areas from one of the aerospace industry’s largest system providers.

About the speaker...

Juan is Vice President of Enterprise Engineering at Collins Aerospace, leading a team of over 2800 engineers across the United States, the United Kingdom, Poland and India. Enterprise Engineering is part of Collins Aerospace headquarters, and works closely with the engineering teams in the Company’s six business units. In this role, Juan is responsible for leading advanced technology planning and investment, driving the vitality of the Global Engineering Center teams, streamlining engineering supplier planning, and promoting continuous improvement throughout Collins’ businesses. Prior to joining United Technologies, Juan was with the General Electric Company where he most recently served as the Chief Technology Officer for GE’s Grid Solutions business. Juan lives with his wife Erika, his son Carlos and his daughter Josephine in Charlotte, North Carolina.

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Presentation Wed, 29 Jan 2020 15:24:04 -0500 2020-01-31T13:30:00-05:00 BBB Aerospace Engineering Presentation Juan de Debout
Chair's Distinguished Lecture: Algorithmic Foundations of Resilient Collaborative Autonomy: From Robust Combinatorial Optimization to Perception (February 6, 2020 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/72304 72304-17972525@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Thursday, February 6, 2020 4:00pm
Location: Francois-Xavier Bagnoud Building
Organized By: Aerospace Engineering

Vasileios Tzoumas
Research scientist
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Collaborative autonomous vehicles hold the promise to revolutionize transportation, disaster response, and space exploration. Already, micro-aerial vehicles with on-board cameras have become a multi-billion-dollar industry; and as we enter the new decade, teams of semi-autonomous flying cars, jet fighters, and space-exploration vehicles are being launched. An era of ubiquitous aerospace vehicles is becoming a reality, and along with it autonomous vehicles that can form teams, agree on navigation plans, and perceive the world. However, this future is threatened by denial-of-service (DoS) and deceptive attacks and failures that can compromise the vehicles’ teams, navigation plans, and perception capabilities. These threats lie outside the reach of cybersecurity, and of estimation and control against malicious data. Instead, algorithms at the intersection of perception, planning, and non-convex optimization are needed. I will present two algorithms from my research, and my vision for a resilient collaborative autonomy.


First, I will discuss the first provably optimal algorithms for robust combinatorial optimization against any numbers of DoS attacks. The algorithms can robustify for the first time teams and their navigation plans against DoS attacks. I will demonstrate this via search and rescue, and surveillance experiments. Second, I will present algorithms that robustify visual perception capabilities against deceptive failures (outliers). The algorithms achieve extreme outlier-robustness in near real-time for the first time. I will illustrate this across various perception problems, on datasets for localization and mapping (SLAM), object recognition, and 3D-reconstruction. I will conclude with my vision for a collaborative autonomy that is not only robust but also resilient: I will argue the need for a technological convergence between (i) “cyber” capabilities for a distributed artificial intelligence, driven by adaptive learning and data-driven perception and navigation algorithms, and (ii) “physical” capabilities of morphable structures, self-healing materials, and smart devices.

About the speaker...

Vasileios Tzoumas is a research scientist at the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AeroAstro), and the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Before that, he was a post-doctoral associate at AeroAstro and LIDS for a bit over a year. He received his Ph.D. in 2018 at the Department of Electrical and Systems Engineering, University of Pennsylvania (UPenn). In 2017, he was a visiting Ph.D. student at the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society, MIT. He holds a Diploma in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens (2012); a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering from UPenn (2016); and a Master of Arts in Statistics from the Wharton School of Business at UPenn (2016). He aims to enable autonomous, collaborative cyber-physical systems that are resilient against denial-of-service and deceptive attacks and failures. His theoretical focus is at the interplay of perception, control, communication, and computing. His application and experimental focus include multi-robot tasks of autonomous (visual) navigation, information gathering, and surveillance. Vasileios builds on fundamental tools of control theory, robotic perception, computational complexity, and combinatorial and non-convex optimization. He was a Best Student Paper Award finalist at the 2017 IEEE Conference in Decision and Control (CDC).

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Presentation Fri, 31 Jan 2020 10:44:39 -0500 2020-02-06T16:00:00-05:00 Francois-Xavier Bagnoud Building Aerospace Engineering Presentation Tzoumas
Aerospace Department Seminar Series: Ethics Deep Dive (February 14, 2020 1:30pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/72830 72830-18079390@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, February 14, 2020 1:30pm
Location: BBB
Organized By: Aerospace Engineering

George F. Halow
Professor of Practice
Aerospace Engineering

George Halow is a Professor of Practice in the University of Michigan Aerospace Engineering Department. He has 30+ years of industry experience, most of it as an executive in many functional areas (product development, manufacturing, business strategy, finance). He will provide a multi-disciplined (lectures, case studies, video, and open dialog) review of ethics in engineering and business, with the Friday, February 14th lecture being a deep dive into a prevailing ethical topic of interest in the aerospace industry.

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Presentation Wed, 12 Feb 2020 16:03:12 -0500 2020-02-14T13:30:00-05:00 BBB Aerospace Engineering Presentation George Halow
Chair's Distinguished Lecture: Numerical modeling of plasmas for space propulsion and nuclear fusion (February 18, 2020 3:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/72410 72410-18000393@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Tuesday, February 18, 2020 3:00pm
Location: Francois-Xavier Bagnoud Building
Organized By: Aerospace Engineering

Bhuvana Srinivasan
Assistant Professor
Director of Plasma Dynamics Computational Laboratory
Virginia Tech

A detailed understanding of plasma physics is critical to overcoming physics and engineering challenges such as those posed by long-duration operation of electric propulsion devices and the development of nuclear fusion concepts. At the Plasma Dynamics Computational Laboratory at Virginia Tech, we study fundamental processes such as plasma sheath physics and plasma-material interactions to support and overcome some of the physics challenges of advanced space propulsion concepts. Furthermore, nuclear fusion, which remains one of the biggest unsolved problems of the previous and present centuries, may hold the key to long-duration, high-payload spaceflight in addition to potentially satisfying terrestrial energy demands. Research at the laboratory also supports a wide array of fusion concepts including magnetic confinement fusion, magneto-inertial fusion, and inertial confinement fusion. The high-energy-density hydrodynamics research being performed to study these concepts extends to astrophysics and national security applications. A common challenge across these varied applications is the necessity for high-fidelity computational models for kinetic and fluid plasmas. Recent advances in plasma modeling, from magnetohydrodynamic to fully kinetic, will be presented. This research seminar will describe novel kinetic and multi-fluid models and will discuss original research contributions in two representative applications: plasma-material interactions relevant to plasma thrusters and high-energy-density hydrodynamics.

About the speaker...

Dr. Bhuvana Srinivasan is an Assistant Professor in the Kevin T. Crofton Department of Aerospace and Ocean engineering at Virginia Tech where she has been developing a computational plasma physics program. Prior to joining Virginia Tech, she was a postdoc and a scientist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. She received her PhD from the University of Washington. She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in spacecraft propulsion, advanced spacecraft propulsion, computational plasma physics, and hypersonic aerodynamics. She is the Director of the Plasma Dynamics Computational Laboratory which comprises two postdocs, eight PhD students, and a number of masters and undergraduate students. The research areas in her group include plasma-material interactions in thrusters and magnetic fusion devices, instabilities in high-energy-density fusion and astrophysical plasmas, ionospheric plasma instabilities, and numerical algorithm development for fluid and kinetic models. She is a recipient of the NSF CAREER award as well as the Outstanding Assistant Professor award and Faculty Fellow in the College of Engineering at Virginia Tech. Her research is supported by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the Department of Energy Office of Science, the Department of Energy National Nuclear Security Administration, the National Science Foundation, and the Los Alamos National Laboratory

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Presentation Mon, 03 Feb 2020 13:30:57 -0500 2020-02-18T15:00:00-05:00 Francois-Xavier Bagnoud Building Aerospace Engineering Presentation Bhuvana Srinivasan
Chair's Distinguished Lecture: A Molecular-Level Understanding of Hypersonic Flows (February 20, 2020 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/72921 72921-18094696@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Thursday, February 20, 2020 4:00pm
Location: Francois-Xavier Bagnoud Building
Organized By: Aerospace Engineering

Tom Schwartzentruber
Professor of Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics
University of Minnesota

Predicting what happens as a hypersonic vehicle flies through the atmosphere involves a lot of interesting physics. The strong shock wave, generated ahead of the vehicle, superheats the air to thousands of degrees and partially dissociates the air into atomic oxygen and nitrogen. Surrounded by this high-temperature shock layer, the vehicle heat shield experiences large heating rates and must simultaneously withstand high temperatures and intense surface chemistry driven by reactive atomic species. Furthermore, as the shock-heated gas flows around the vehicle, the flow can transition from smooth laminar flow to chaotic turbulent flow and can form complex shock interactions near control surfaces. Predicting such effects requires understanding the interplay between fluid dynamics, thermodynamics, and chemical kinetics; a research field referred to as aerothermodynamics.

In this talk, I will focus mainly on our current understanding of the high-temperature shock layer. I will explain how we have reached the point where this thin shock layer (often on the order of one centimeter thick) can be studied at the scale of individual molecular collisions. In fact, simulations can now be performed where the only model input consists of the forces between atoms as dictated entirely by quantum chemistry. I will present results from such first-principles simulations along with comparison to experimental shock-tube data, and I will discuss some of the new physical insights gained. I will conclude the talk by highlighting the next big challenge of pursuing molecular understanding for gas-material interactions. This is an exciting field driven not only by NASA and the Department of Defense, but also by commercial endeavors to field satellite mega-constellations in low Earth orbit.

About the speaker...

Tom Schwartzentruber received his Bachelor’s degree in engineering science and his Master’s degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Toronto. He then received his doctorate degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Michigan. For his doctorate work he received the AIAA Orville and Wilbur Wright graduate award. He joined the faculty in the Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics department at the University of Minnesota in 2008, after which he received a Young Investigator Program Award from the AFOSR and the University of Minnesota Taylor Career Development Award for exceptional contributions by a candidate for tenure. He specializes in particle simulation methods such as direct simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) and molecular dynamics (MD), including coupling such methods with each other and with continuum computational fluid dynamics (CFD) methods. Currently, his research group is involved in a number of projects spanning hypersonic nonequilibrium reacting flows, high-temperature gas-surface interactions, hybrid particle-continuum methods, and micro-scale flows.

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Presentation Fri, 14 Feb 2020 10:17:34 -0500 2020-02-20T16:00:00-05:00 Francois-Xavier Bagnoud Building Aerospace Engineering Presentation Tom Schwartzentruber
AE 285 Undergraduate Seminar: Environmental & Social Sustainability and Leadership in Corporate Citizenship (February 21, 2020 1:30pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/73046 73046-18131838@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, February 21, 2020 1:30pm
Location: BBB
Organized By: Aerospace Engineering

John Viera
Executive in Residence
Erb Institute, University of Michigan

An increasing number of companies, large and small, are developing core strategies and engaging in projects that address environmental and social challenges in our society. The social efforts often reflect strong corporate citizenship cultures at these companies. Many engineers are seeking to work for companies that are engaging in these types of projects. During this seminar the speaker will highlight such efforts within a heavy manufacturing entity, in this case the automotive sector. Such efforts can be easily aligned with potential efforts within the aerospace industry.

About the speaker...

John Viera was most recently the former Global Director, Sustainability & Vehicle Environmental Matters at Ford Motor Company, a position he held since January, 2007. Mr. Viera was responsible for developing global sustainable business plans and policies, interfacing with global regulatory bodies, reporting externally on the company’s environmental and social performance, and leading the company’s engagement and partnerships with non-government organizations (NGOs) and other external stakeholders.

Viera has held several positions within Ford Motor Company during his 30 year tenure. For the first thirteen years of his career, he worked in the company’s Truck Division with responsibilities that included leading the Company efforts in the development of its first natural gas-fueled pickup trucks and also leading the Company’s Global Truck Computer Aided Design organization.

In 1997, Viera was appointed manager, Plant Engineering Vehicle Team, Explorer and Mountaineer programs. Located in Louisville, Kentucky, Viera was responsible for all on-site engineering personnel for Explorer plants in Louisville, St. Louis, Missouri, and Valencia, Venezuela. He returned to Michigan in 1999 to become the chief engineer for the Ranger Compact Pickup and Electric Ranger. In 2002, Viera took on the company’s mid-term cost reduction initiative, building a team which delivered $1.2 billion of savings in eighteen months, beating his assigned target by over a year. In 2003, Viera became chief engineer for the Expedition and Navigator Full Size SUVs, with complete responsibility for current and future model programs.

Mr. Viera recently served on the advisory boards at Georgia Tech in Atlanta, the Graham Institute of Environmental Sustainability at the University of Michigan, the advisory board of Sustainable Brands, and the Energy Advisory Committee at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, as well as the chair of the Department of Homeland Security’s Sustainability and Efficiency Task Force in Washington, D.C.

A native of Chicago, Viera attended the University of Michigan, receiving his Bachelors of Science in Mechanical Engineering in 1984 as well as a Masters in Business Administration in 1992.

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Workshop / Seminar Tue, 18 Feb 2020 13:53:04 -0500 2020-02-21T13:30:00-05:00 2020-02-21T15:00:00-05:00 BBB Aerospace Engineering Workshop / Seminar John Viera
Defense Dissertation: Dynamic Coverage Control and Estimation in Collaborative Networks of Human-Aerial/Space Co-Robots (March 18, 2020 10:00am) https://events.umich.edu/event/73667 73667-18278624@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Wednesday, March 18, 2020 10:00am
Location: Francois-Xavier Bagnoud Building
Organized By: Aerospace Engineering

William M. Bentz

Committee:
Assistant Professor Dimitra Panagou (Chair)
Professor Ella M. Atkins (Member)
Professor Ilya V. Kolmanovsky (Member)
Assistant Professor Ram Vasudevan (Cognate Member)

Presentation Info:
March 18, 2020
10:00 AM
1044 FXB (McDivitt Conference Room)

The past twenty years have seen rapid improvements in the performance of small unmanned aerial vehicles as well as the continued miniaturization of low-cost sensors. The intersection of these technologies has given rise to a renaissance of control and decision-making developments geared towards mobile wireless sensor networks (MWSNs). One such development, dynamic coverage control, enables MWSNs to rapidly explore and gather information from uncertain environments. This defense will overview contributions to dynamic coverage in environments containing information decay, stochastic intruders, and power-constrained vehicles.

The extension of coverage to collaborative networks of humans and aerial/space robots shall also be presented. The author considers a human wearing an augmented reality (AR) device while completing multiple interdependent tasks that are time-sensitive and spatially separated. The problem of coverage is here coupled to that of human intent inference. An aerial robot shares the environment and uses machine learning in order to determine both the locations of tasks as well as their temporal context. This enables the streaming of real time task images that are beyond the human’s field of view to their AR display. In such a way, the human can instantaneously cover a greater volume of the environment than is naturally possible.

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Presentation Fri, 06 Mar 2020 15:00:19 -0500 2020-03-18T10:00:00-04:00 Francois-Xavier Bagnoud Building Aerospace Engineering Presentation Supporting Picture
Defense Dissertation: Variational and Time-Distributed Methods for Real-time Model Predictive Control (March 19, 2020 10:00am) https://events.umich.edu/event/73664 73664-18278623@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Thursday, March 19, 2020 10:00am
Location: Lurie Robert H. Engin. Ctr
Organized By: Aerospace Engineering

Dominic Liao-McPherson

Committee:
Prof. Ilya Kolmanovsky (Chair)
Prof. Jing Sun (Cognate)
Prof. Alex Gorodetsky
Dr. Ken Butts (External, Toyota)

Time/location:
March 19th 2020, 10:00 AM
GM Conference Room, Lurie Engineering Center (4th floor)

Autonomous systems are beginning to impact many aspects of society, e.g., drones are becoming commonplace and self-driving cars are being developed on an industrial scale. These systems need to make complex decisions onboard; mathematical optimization is a powerful paradigm for approaching these problems. In particular, Model Predictive Control (MPC), a powerful optimization-based methodology for controlling constrained systems, is an important enabler for autonomy. However, solving optimization problems reliably, in real-time, using limited onboard computing resources, is a difficult undertaking.

This dissertation addresses the development, implementation, and validation of several numerical methods for solving optimal control problems (OCPs) in real-time. First, I present FBstab, a novel quadratic programming algorithm with strong robustness properties that is easy to warmstart and can exploit the structure of optimal control problems. Second, I introduce Time-distributed Optimization (TDO), a unifying framework for studying the system theoretic consequences of computation limits, which I use to show that, in some situations, it is possible to recover the stability and robustness properties of optimal MPC despite limited resources. Finally, I illustrate the applicability of these methods in the real-world through a diesel engine control example.

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Presentation Fri, 06 Mar 2020 14:53:33 -0500 2020-03-19T10:00:00-04:00 Lurie Robert H. Engin. Ctr Aerospace Engineering Presentation Dominic Liao-McPherson
Agility Prime, Take Flight - A Flying Car Expo powered by the USAF (Virtual Event) (April 27, 2020 8:00am) https://events.umich.edu/event/74441 74441-18720532@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Monday, April 27, 2020 8:00am
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Aerospace Engineering

The United States Air Force , Dr. Will Roper and the Mobility Directorate are excited to announce that the Agility Prime kick-off, originally scheduled for SXSW but amidst the COVID-19 crisis will be taking place virtually the week of April 27. This is a great opportunity to pursue innovation in an exciting new field from the relative safety of our homes,- “now is the perfect time to make Jetson’s cars real.” - Dr. Will Roper.

The objective of the virtual event is to reinforce the Air Force commitment to partnering with industry, investors, and the interagency to help ensure there is a robust domestic capability in this new aerospace sector. Besides the keynote, there will be live virtual panels for manufacturers to showcase their capabilities alongside investors and academia. The government will also provide briefings and live moderated question and answer sessions to describe the contracting, testing, airworthiness, and import/export processes.

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Conference / Symposium Tue, 28 Apr 2020 09:59:19 -0400 2020-04-27T08:00:00-04:00 2020-04-27T17:00:00-04:00 Off Campus Location Aerospace Engineering Conference / Symposium
Agility Prime, Take Flight - A Flying Car Expo powered by the USAF (Virtual Event) (April 28, 2020 8:00am) https://events.umich.edu/event/74441 74441-18720533@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Tuesday, April 28, 2020 8:00am
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Aerospace Engineering

The United States Air Force , Dr. Will Roper and the Mobility Directorate are excited to announce that the Agility Prime kick-off, originally scheduled for SXSW but amidst the COVID-19 crisis will be taking place virtually the week of April 27. This is a great opportunity to pursue innovation in an exciting new field from the relative safety of our homes,- “now is the perfect time to make Jetson’s cars real.” - Dr. Will Roper.

The objective of the virtual event is to reinforce the Air Force commitment to partnering with industry, investors, and the interagency to help ensure there is a robust domestic capability in this new aerospace sector. Besides the keynote, there will be live virtual panels for manufacturers to showcase their capabilities alongside investors and academia. The government will also provide briefings and live moderated question and answer sessions to describe the contracting, testing, airworthiness, and import/export processes.

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Conference / Symposium Tue, 28 Apr 2020 09:59:19 -0400 2020-04-28T08:00:00-04:00 2020-04-28T17:00:00-04:00 Off Campus Location Aerospace Engineering Conference / Symposium
Agility Prime, Take Flight - A Flying Car Expo powered by the USAF (Virtual Event) (April 29, 2020 8:00am) https://events.umich.edu/event/74441 74441-18720534@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Wednesday, April 29, 2020 8:00am
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Aerospace Engineering

The United States Air Force , Dr. Will Roper and the Mobility Directorate are excited to announce that the Agility Prime kick-off, originally scheduled for SXSW but amidst the COVID-19 crisis will be taking place virtually the week of April 27. This is a great opportunity to pursue innovation in an exciting new field from the relative safety of our homes,- “now is the perfect time to make Jetson’s cars real.” - Dr. Will Roper.

The objective of the virtual event is to reinforce the Air Force commitment to partnering with industry, investors, and the interagency to help ensure there is a robust domestic capability in this new aerospace sector. Besides the keynote, there will be live virtual panels for manufacturers to showcase their capabilities alongside investors and academia. The government will also provide briefings and live moderated question and answer sessions to describe the contracting, testing, airworthiness, and import/export processes.

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Conference / Symposium Tue, 28 Apr 2020 09:59:19 -0400 2020-04-29T08:00:00-04:00 2020-04-29T17:00:00-04:00 Off Campus Location Aerospace Engineering Conference / Symposium
Agility Prime, Take Flight - A Flying Car Expo powered by the USAF (Virtual Event) (April 30, 2020 8:00am) https://events.umich.edu/event/74441 74441-18720535@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Thursday, April 30, 2020 8:00am
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Aerospace Engineering

The United States Air Force , Dr. Will Roper and the Mobility Directorate are excited to announce that the Agility Prime kick-off, originally scheduled for SXSW but amidst the COVID-19 crisis will be taking place virtually the week of April 27. This is a great opportunity to pursue innovation in an exciting new field from the relative safety of our homes,- “now is the perfect time to make Jetson’s cars real.” - Dr. Will Roper.

The objective of the virtual event is to reinforce the Air Force commitment to partnering with industry, investors, and the interagency to help ensure there is a robust domestic capability in this new aerospace sector. Besides the keynote, there will be live virtual panels for manufacturers to showcase their capabilities alongside investors and academia. The government will also provide briefings and live moderated question and answer sessions to describe the contracting, testing, airworthiness, and import/export processes.

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Conference / Symposium Tue, 28 Apr 2020 09:59:19 -0400 2020-04-30T08:00:00-04:00 2020-04-30T17:00:00-04:00 Off Campus Location Aerospace Engineering Conference / Symposium
Agility Prime, Take Flight - A Flying Car Expo powered by the USAF (Virtual Event) (May 1, 2020 8:00am) https://events.umich.edu/event/74441 74441-18720536@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, May 1, 2020 8:00am
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Aerospace Engineering

The United States Air Force , Dr. Will Roper and the Mobility Directorate are excited to announce that the Agility Prime kick-off, originally scheduled for SXSW but amidst the COVID-19 crisis will be taking place virtually the week of April 27. This is a great opportunity to pursue innovation in an exciting new field from the relative safety of our homes,- “now is the perfect time to make Jetson’s cars real.” - Dr. Will Roper.

The objective of the virtual event is to reinforce the Air Force commitment to partnering with industry, investors, and the interagency to help ensure there is a robust domestic capability in this new aerospace sector. Besides the keynote, there will be live virtual panels for manufacturers to showcase their capabilities alongside investors and academia. The government will also provide briefings and live moderated question and answer sessions to describe the contracting, testing, airworthiness, and import/export processes.

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Conference / Symposium Tue, 28 Apr 2020 09:59:19 -0400 2020-05-01T08:00:00-04:00 2020-05-01T17:00:00-04:00 Off Campus Location Aerospace Engineering Conference / Symposium
Aerospace Engineering Welcome Week: [Day-One] Transfer Student Virtual Boot Camp (August 24, 2020 1:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/75756 75756-19598165@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Monday, August 24, 2020 1:00pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Aerospace Engineering

The departmental preparatory boot camp and orientation will take place virtually on Monday and Wednesday of welcome week for new transfer students. The boot camp covers MATLAB, linear algebra, presentation skills, test preparation tips, and more. Transfer students are strongly encouraged to attend. Registration is required.

Audience: New Undergraduate Transfer Students
Contact: Kimberly Johnson, berlykim@umich.edu

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Other Wed, 19 Aug 2020 21:13:58 -0400 2020-08-24T13:00:00-04:00 2020-08-24T17:30:00-04:00 Off Campus Location Aerospace Engineering Other
Aerospace Engineering Welcome Week: [Day-Two] Transfer Student Virtual Boot Camp (August 26, 2020 1:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/75758 75758-19600125@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Wednesday, August 26, 2020 1:00pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Aerospace Engineering

Aerospace Engineering Welcome Week: [Day-Two] Transfer Student Virtual Boot Camp
The departmental preparatory boot camp and orientation will take place virtually on Monday and Wednesday of welcome week for new transfer students. The boot camp covers MATLAB, linear algebra, presentation skills, test preparation tips, and more. Transfer students are strongly encouraged to attend. Registration is required!

Audience: New Undergraduate Transfer Students
Contact: Kimberly Johnson, berlykim@umich.edu

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Other Wed, 19 Aug 2020 21:13:33 -0400 2020-08-26T13:00:00-04:00 2020-08-26T14:30:00-04:00 Off Campus Location Aerospace Engineering Other
Aerospace Engineering Welcome Week: Undergrad Student Meet & Greet (August 26, 2020 3:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/75853 75853-19615919@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Wednesday, August 26, 2020 3:00pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Aerospace Engineering

Join us for the Fall 2020 Undergrad Meet and Greet! During this virtual event students will meet our Department Chair, Dr. Tony Waas and Undergraduate Faculty Advisor, Prof. Luis Bernal. You will also hear directly from WAA, SGT, MASA, and Aerospace Engineering's new Students of Color committee members. Learn what these student groups are all about and how you can get involved.

Registration is not required, but you may submit a question to our faculty or student reps at the link below.

Questions: https://rb.gy/z8u5zk

See you there!

Audience: Undeclared CoE and Aerospace Engineering Undergraduate Students
Contact: Israa Ali (Undergrad DEI Committee Chair), aliim@umich.edu

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Reception / Open House Thu, 20 Aug 2020 08:02:25 -0400 2020-08-26T15:00:00-04:00 2020-08-26T16:30:00-04:00 Off Campus Location Aerospace Engineering Reception / Open House
Aerospace Engineering Welcome Week: Virtual Outreach Information Session (August 27, 2020 1:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/75827 75827-19613921@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Thursday, August 27, 2020 1:00pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Aerospace Engineering

The department is hosting an informative virtual outreach meeting with outreach student leaders and members. The meeting includes a special presentation from UM Risk Management’s Children on Campus Program Coordinator, Denne Lawton, who will share UM's new outreach policies as it relates to COVID-19 followed by a Q&A. The department will also share new outreach initiatives and opportunities for 2020/21.

Audience: Student leaders actively involved in outreach
Contact: Kimberly Johnson, berlykim@umich.edu

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Reception / Open House Wed, 19 Aug 2020 10:42:48 -0400 2020-08-27T13:00:00-04:00 2020-08-27T14:30:00-04:00 Off Campus Location Aerospace Engineering Reception / Open House
Aerospace Engineering Welcome Week: New Graduate Student Orientation (August 28, 2020 8:30am) https://events.umich.edu/event/75752 75752-19598153@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, August 28, 2020 8:30am
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Aerospace Engineering

The departmental graduate orientation is a virtual event with presentations by faculty and staff from the department, and opportunities for questions.

Audience: New Graduate Students
Contact: Prof. Chris Fidkowski, aero-prospective@umich.edu

Session 1: 8:30 - 10:00am
Overview and MSE Description - Incoming Masters and PhD Students
Zoom Meeting Link: https://umich.zoom.us/j/96638469525

Agenda
- Welcome
- Facilities + Safety
- IT
- Financial Services
- MSE Overview

Session 2: 9:20 - 10:00am
PhD Description - Incoming PhD Students
Zoom Meeting Link: https://umich.zoom.us/j/94160504187

Agenda
- PhD Overview

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Reception / Open House Wed, 26 Aug 2020 22:58:57 -0400 2020-08-28T08:30:00-04:00 2020-08-28T10:00:00-04:00 Off Campus Location Aerospace Engineering Reception / Open House
Aerospace Engineering Welcome Week: Virtual Game Night organized by GSAC (August 28, 2020 7:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/75751 75751-19598148@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, August 28, 2020 7:00pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Aerospace Engineering

The aerospace graduate student advisory committee (GSAC) is hosting a virtual game night to kick off the Fall semester and welcome incoming graduate students! The event will be held over Zoom (https://umich.zoom.us/j/91832507573) and is open to all grad students in the department. Join us for a night of team trivia and other activities starting at 7 pm EDT on Friday, August 28.

Contact: Ryan Patterson, rppat@umich.edu

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Reception / Open House Fri, 21 Aug 2020 09:14:17 -0400 2020-08-28T19:00:00-04:00 2020-08-28T20:30:00-04:00 Off Campus Location Aerospace Engineering Reception / Open House
Chair's Distinguished Lecture: What Can the Aerospace Field Do About Its Diversity Problem? (September 3, 2020 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/76153 76153-19669623@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Thursday, September 3, 2020 4:00pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Aerospace Engineering

Ken Powell
Arthur F. Thurnau Professor and DEI Faculty Liaison
Aerospace Engineering, UM

The other talks this semester will be based on research in Aerospace Sciences and Engineering. This talk is based on research in the Social Sciences - particularly Psychology, Sociology, Economics - and how it applies to education and careers in aerospace engineering.

For the past five years, I have been part of a group of Michigan professors who read this social science literature, and meet to discuss its implications on academic careers - teaching, research, service and hiring of faculty. We also give talks about why and how to improve diversity in faculty hiring to faculty throughout the university, department chairs and deans, and faculty at other universities.

In this talk, I will present some classical and recent social science research about issues that affect our ability to hire and retain a diverse and excellent faculty, particularly in STEM fields, and especially in aerospace engineering. Topics will include implicit bias, stereotype threat, accumulation of disadvantage, and some of the steps we are taking as a university to improve the composition of the faculty. I will also present data about the demographics of the aerospace field, and give you some strategies for being a part of the much-needed solution to Aerospace's diversity challenges.

About the speaker...

Professor Powell is a member and past director of the W. M. Keck Foundation Computational Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, and a co-founder and co-director of the Center for Space Environment Modeling and the the Center for Radiative Shock Hydrodynamics. At the undergraduate level, he teaches freshman computing, compressible flow, aerodynamics and aircraft design; at the graduate level, he teaches aerodynamics and computational fluid dynamics. His research interests include: algorithm development for fluid dynamics, aerodynamics and plasmadynamics; and the application of computational methods to problems in aerodynamics, aeroelasticity, fluid dynamics and space environment/space weather. His articles appear in Journal of Fluid Mechanics, Journal of Computational Physics, and Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics, among others. He is also a co-author of Multi-Media Fluid Mechanics. He has received a number of awards for his research, including a National Science Foundation Young Investigator Award, and a number of awards for his teaching, including the Arthur F. Thurnau Professorship. He is married to Susanne Maria Krummel; they have three children: Jasmine, Ryan and Nicole.

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Class / Instruction Tue, 01 Sep 2020 14:36:17 -0400 2020-09-03T16:00:00-04:00 2020-09-03T17:15:00-04:00 Off Campus Location Aerospace Engineering Class / Instruction Kenneth Powell
Chair's Distinguished Lecture: Safe and Adversarially-Robust Multi-Agent Systems (September 10, 2020 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/76151 76151-19669621@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Thursday, September 10, 2020 4:00pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Aerospace Engineering

Dimitra Panagou
Associate Professor
Aerospace Engineering
University of Michigan

Planning, navigation and control for multi-agent systems have been fundamental topics of research with numerous applications in unmanned aerial vehicles and robotic networks. Despite significant progress over the years, there are still open challenges due to constraints (in terms of state and time specifications), adversarial or faulty information, environmental uncertainty and scalability. This talk will present some of our recent results and ongoing work on safe and adversarially-robust multi-robot systems. The proposed framework provides provably-correct and computationally-efficient solutions on the mission synthesis of multi-agent systems in the presence of adversarial attacks and spatiotemporal constraints.

About the speaker...

Dimitra Panagou received the Diploma and PhD degrees in Mechanical Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens, Greece, in 2006 and 2012, respectively. Since September 2014 she has been a faculty member with the Department of Aerospace Engineering, University of Michigan. Prior to joining the University of Michigan, she was a postdoctoral research associate with the Coordinated Science Laboratory, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (2012-2014), a visiting research scholar with the GRASP Lab, University of Pennsylvania (June 2013, fall 2010) and a visiting research scholar with the University of Delaware, Mechanical Engineering Department (spring 2009).
Dr. Panagou's research program spans the areas of nonlinear systems and control; multi-agent systems and networks; motion and path planning; human-robot interaction; navigation, guidance, and control of aerospace vehicles. She is particularly interested in the development of provably-correct methods for the safe and secure (resilient) operation of autonomous systems in complex missions, with applications in robot/sensor networks and multi-vehicle systems (ground, marine, aerial, space). Dr. Panagou is a recipient of the NASA Early Career Faculty Award, the AFOSR Young Investigator Award, the NSF CAREER Award, and a Senior Member of the IEEE and the AIAA.

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Class / Instruction Tue, 01 Sep 2020 14:54:48 -0400 2020-09-10T16:00:00-04:00 2020-09-10T17:15:00-04:00 Off Campus Location Aerospace Engineering Class / Instruction Dimitra Panagou
AE285 Engineering Seminar: COVID-19: How the Aerospace Ecosystem Went Into Hybernation Mode (September 11, 2020 1:30pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/76515 76515-19719175@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, September 11, 2020 1:30pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Aerospace Engineering

Mike Stengel
Senior Associate
AeroDynamic Advisory

The aerospace industry is no strangers to crises, be it economic downturns, oil price shocks, geopolitical events, or acts of terrorism. The industry has also faced outbreaks of disease as well, but COVID-19 has posed the most challenging circumstances in the entire history of the business. How did the industry respond in the wake of growing cases? How have airlines shifted into “survival mode” and what measures have they taken? How long is this hibernation period sustainable? What are the impacts on suppliers to airlines, like manufacturers and maintenance providers? What’s the outlook for the recovery, and what could the industry potentially look like on the other side? What does this mean for students looking to enter aerospace? What opportunities will arise, and which avenues will become more difficult? In this seminar, AeroDynamic Advisory Senior Associate Mike Stengel will outline the series of events that have characterized the COVID-19 outbreak, and the outlook for the aerospace industry.


About the speaker...

Mike Stengel is a Senior Associate at AeroDynamic Advisory and self-proclaimed aerospace industry geek. Over his consulting career, Mike has gained experience in over 50 client engagements focusing on strategy, market analysis, M&A/due diligence, technology, and customer satisfaction. Key clients that Mike has worked with have included aerospace manufacturers, airlines, maintenance providers, investors, and government agencies. Mike graduated from the University of Michigan with a BS in Aerospace Engineering, and is an FAA-licensed commercial pilot.

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Class / Instruction Tue, 01 Sep 2020 16:21:15 -0400 2020-09-11T13:30:00-04:00 2020-09-11T15:00:00-04:00 Off Campus Location Aerospace Engineering Class / Instruction Mike Stengel
Chair's Distinguished Lecture: Verified Artificial Intelligence and Autonomy (September 17, 2020 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/77087 77087-19796482@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Thursday, September 17, 2020 4:00pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Aerospace Engineering

Sanjit A. Seshia
Professor
Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences (EECS)
UC Berkeley

Verified artificial intelligence (AI) is the goal of designing AI-based systems that have strong, verified assurances of correctness with respect to mathematically-specified requirements. This goal is particularly important for autonomous and semi-autonomous systems. In this talk, I will consider Verified AI from a formal methods perspective and with a special focus on autonomy. I will describe the challenges for and recent progress towards attaining Verified AI, with examples from the domain of intelligent cyber-physical systems, with a particular focus on autonomous vehicles and aerospace systems.

About the speaker...

Sanjit A. Seshia is a Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at the University of California, Berkeley. He received an M.S. and Ph.D. in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University, and a B.Tech. in Computer Science and Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay. His research interests are in formal methods for dependable and secure computing, with a current focus on the areas of cyber-physical systems, computer security, machine learning, and robotics. He has made pioneering contributions to the areas of satisfiability modulo theories (SMT), SMT-based verification, and inductive program synthesis. He is co-author of a widely-used textbook on embedded, cyber-physical systems and has led the development of technologies for cyber-physical systems education based on formal methods. His awards and honors include a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, the Frederick Emmons Terman Award for contributions to electrical engineering and computer science education, the Donald O. Pederson Best Paper Award for the IEEE Transactions on CAD, and the IEEE Technical Committee on Cyber-Physical Systems (TCCPS) Mid-Career Award. He is a Fellow of the IEEE.

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Class / Instruction Fri, 11 Sep 2020 09:23:20 -0400 2020-09-17T16:00:00-04:00 2020-09-17T17:30:00-04:00 Off Campus Location Aerospace Engineering Class / Instruction Sanjit Seshia
Fall 2020 - AE285 Seminar Series, Architecting a System for Human Spaceflight, Rob Meyerson, Delalune Space (September 18, 2020 1:30pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/76906 76906-19774606@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, September 18, 2020 1:30pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Aerospace Engineering

Rob Meyerson
Founder and CEO
Delalune Space

Rob Meyerson, the former president of Blue Origin, will present "Architecting a System for Human Spaceflight." The pros and cons of the Space Shuttle system will be discussed, along with a review of the Blue Origin New Shepard suborbital space system. Booster propulsion, escape systems, and human factors will be considered in the discussion.


About the speaker...

Rob Meyerson is the founder and CEO of Delalune Space, a management consulting company focused on the aerospace, mobility, technology and investment sectors. Rob is the former President of Blue Origin.

Rob oversaw the steady growth of Blue Origin from 2003 to 2018, building the company from its founding into a more than 1500-person organization. Under Rob’s leadership, Blue Origin developed the New Shepard system for suborbital human and research flights, the BE-3 LOX/LH2 rocket engine, the BE-4 LOX/LNG rocket engine, the New Glenn launch vehicle and the company vision for humanity in space; including the Blue Moon lunar lander, human spacecraft, habitats and in-space tugs. During this time, Rob oversaw Blue’s growth in staff (10 to 1500+), budget ($10M to $1B), revenue (zero to confidential) and facilities (one location to six, 50K to 1M+ sq ft).

Prior to joining Blue, Rob was a Senior Program Manager at Kistler Aerospace, where he was a member of the leadership team developing a two-stage reusable launch vehicle. Rob began his career as an aerodynamicist at NASA’s Johnson Space Center (JSC).

Rob earned a B.S. degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Michigan and a master’s degree in industrial engineering from the University of Houston. He is an AIAA Fellow, a Trustee at the Museum of Flight, and a member of the University of Michigan College of Engineering Leadership Advisory Board. Rob was awarded the Space Flight Award by the American Astronautical Society in 2017 for his accomplishments at Blue Origin.

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Class / Instruction Tue, 08 Sep 2020 16:31:32 -0400 2020-09-18T13:30:00-04:00 2020-09-18T15:00:00-04:00 Off Campus Location Aerospace Engineering Class / Instruction Rob Meyerson
Chair's Distinguished Lecture: Simulation and Modeling of High-Speed Disperse Two-Phase Flows (September 24, 2020 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/76157 76157-19669628@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Thursday, September 24, 2020 4:00pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Aerospace Engineering

Jesse Capecelatro
Assistant Professor
Mechanical Engineering and Aerospace Engineering
University of Michigan

Disperse two-phase flows are composed of liquid droplets or solid particles suspended in a carrier fluid. Examples of such flows are numerous within engineering and science. While the past several decades have seen significant progress in developing predictive modeling capabilities, largely due to the advent of high-performance computing, the majority of these efforts have focused on dilute suspensions of particles under low-speed (incompressible) conditions. This talk will focus on recent progress towards understanding and predicting particle-laden flows in more extreme environments, in which gas-phase compressibility and back-coupling from particles to the fluid have an order-one effect. Some relevant examples include solid propellant combustion, coal dust explosions, volcanic eruptions, and the fluidization of regolith from a rocket exhaust plume during planetary/lunar landing. The latter example acts as the primary motivation of this talk. We will examine the fundamental processes of turbulent particle-laden flows, including state-of-the-art phenomenology from experimental observations, existing theories, and simulation techniques. New numerical methods uniquely designed to address this class of flows will be presented, in addition to high-resolution simulations that allow us to probe turbulence and Mach number effects at the sub-particle scale and at scales that encompass millions of particles.

About the speaker...

Jesse Capecelatro is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Michigan. His research group develops numerical methods and data-driven approaches for the prediction and optimization of “messy turbulent flows” relevant to energy and the environment (often multiphase and reacting). Prior to joining Michigan in 2016, Dr. Capecelatro was a research scientist at the Center for Exascale Simulation of Plasma-coupled Combustion (XPACC) at the University of Illinois. He received a B.S. from SUNY Binghamton in 2009, a M.S. from the University of Colorado Boulder in 2011, and a Ph.D. from Cornell in 2014. He is a recipient of the National Science Foundation CAREER Award, Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award, and the ASME Pi Tau Sigma Gold Medal Award.

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Class / Instruction Tue, 01 Sep 2020 14:52:26 -0400 2020-09-24T16:00:00-04:00 2020-09-24T17:15:00-04:00 Off Campus Location Aerospace Engineering Class / Instruction Jesse Capecelatro
Fall 2020 - AE285 Seminar Series, Stealth…An Airplane Design Challenge, Grant Carichner, California Polytechnic State University (September 25, 2020 1:30pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/77556 77556-19885801@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, September 25, 2020 1:30pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Aerospace Engineering

Grant Carichner
Adjunct Professor
California Polytechnic State University

In any combat scenario it is advantageous to be invisible or nearly invisible to your adversary (recall Desert Storm/bombing of Baghdad in 1991). In any situation it is very important to limit your opponent’s ability to harm you. More than 50 years ago initial stealth efforts focused on incorporating materials into an airplane’s design to reduce radar signatures. This proved to be a difficult and elusive goal. Today ‘stealth’ is designed into virtually every military vehicle.

This seminar will review the history of early stealth efforts and conclude with where the state-of-the-art is today. Air vehicles will be the main focus but it will also become clear that stealth is being added to the designs of land and sea vehicles as well. In this discussion reducing the ‘signature’ of an air vehicle to radar will be the primary focus. However, it should be recognized that IR (infrared), audible, and visual signatures can also be very important. They will be introduced with little discussion. Ultimately, the goal is to have a vehicle survive and be able to fly tomorrow’s missions or successfully penetrate enemy positions to destroy its target. Stealth is a major component of survivability but it is not the only one. What was the first stealth airplane? You may be surprised to learn the answer.


About the speaker...

Mr. Carichner went to work for the Lockheed Skunk Works after earning his BS Engr and MS Engr degrees from UCLA. He retired in 2013 after 48 years at the Skunk Works where he worked on most of the company’s high-profile programs. During his career he started out as an aerodynamicist and eventually became Head of Aerodynamics for the Skunk Works. Future program assignments were either Chief Engineer or Program Manager positions. As Chief Engineer for the JASSM Program he was selected as Lockheed’s Inventor of the Year.

The last 15 years of his career were dedicated to lighter-than-air designs. He created the Aerocraft Program whose design resulted in a hybrid airship demonstrator that had many airplane flight characteristics that has changed the course of future airship design.

Currently, Mr. Carichner teaches Airplane Design at Cal Poly Pomona
Mr. Carichner has written two textbooks. One on airplane design and another on airship design. Both books are published by the AIAA.

Fundamentals of Aircraft and Airship Design: Volume I - Aircraft Design
Fundamentals of Aircraft and Airship Design: Volume II - Airship Design and Case Studies

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Class / Instruction Tue, 22 Sep 2020 12:27:45 -0400 2020-09-25T13:30:00-04:00 2020-09-25T15:00:00-04:00 Off Campus Location Aerospace Engineering Class / Instruction Grant Carichner
Black Students in Aerospace [BSA] Movie Event (September 29, 2020 5:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/77826 77826-19941591@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Tuesday, September 29, 2020 5:00pm
Location:
Organized By: Aerospace Engineering

The Black Students in Aerospace (BSA), a new student organization within the Department of Aerospace engineering, would like to invite you to attend our upcoming movie night event.

Over the course of this summer, there has been a resurgence of support, activism, and protests for Black Lives Matter and other human rights issues that have cast a spotlight on the systemic racism present in society. Our organization felt it was important to tie these issues back to the department in order to continue the discourse as well as to bring visibility to the ways their peers are affected.

Because of this, we decided to host a viewing of the documentary I Am Not Your Negro by James Baldwin. The movie will be followed by a guided discussion with a panel of Black engineering students, alumni, and professors from U-M including Alec D. Gallimore, Robert J. Vlasic Dean of Engineering. 

Friday October 2nd
Movie: 6:00pm - 7:30pm (Eastern Time)
Panel: 7:30pm - 8:30pm (Eastern Time)

Please RSVP at https://tinyurl.com/bsa-movie-night

***It is important to note that the film includes brief moments of graphic images, specifically images of lynchings and police brutality.

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Lecture / Discussion Wed, 30 Sep 2020 12:22:25 -0400 2020-09-29T17:00:00-04:00 2020-09-29T18:00:00-04:00 Aerospace Engineering Lecture / Discussion [BSA] Upcoming Movie Event Flyer
Chair's Distinguished Lecture:Enabling Human Operational Performance for Space Exploration (October 1, 2020 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/76160 76160-19669630@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Thursday, October 1, 2020 4:00pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Aerospace Engineering

Leia Stirling
Associate Professor
Industrial and Operations Engineering
Core Faculty in the Center for Ergonomics
Core Faculty in the Robotics Institute
University of Michigan

Space exploration provides challenges in developing system capabilities to leave Earth’s orbit. While there are many missions that have been performed without a crew, having humans present provides many benefits. Humans have flexibility in decision making, versatility with tool usage, more robust perception, and increased efficiency in mission tasks. However, there are challenges to supporting the human in a space environment, including developing space suits, tools, and appropriate mission plans. In this talk, we consider how spacesuit fit affects human performance and how wearable sensors can inform designing space suits, tools, and extravehicular activity task planning.

About the speaker...

Leia Stirling is an Associate Professor in Industrial and Operations Engineering at the University of Michigan, a Core Faculty in the Center for Ergonomics, and a Core Faculty in the Robotics Institute. Her research quantifies human performance and human-machine fluency to assess performance augmentation, advance exoskeleton control algorithms, mitigate injury risk, and provide relevant feedback to subject matter experts across domains. She received her B.S. (2003) and M.S. (2005) in Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and her Ph.D. (2008) in Aeronautics and Astronautics from MIT. She was a postdoctoral researcher at Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School (2008-2009), on the Advanced Technology Team at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering (2009-2012), then an Assistant Professor at MIT (2013 – 2019). She joined the faculty at the University of Michigan in 2019.

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Class / Instruction Tue, 01 Sep 2020 14:53:59 -0400 2020-10-01T16:00:00-04:00 2020-10-01T17:15:00-04:00 Off Campus Location Aerospace Engineering Class / Instruction Leia Stirling
Fall 2020 - AE285 Seminar Series, Startups and Innovation in the Aerospace Enterprise, Ben Marchionna, SkySpecs (October 2, 2020 1:30pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/78029 78029-19955555@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, October 2, 2020 1:30pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Aerospace Engineering

Ben Marchionna
VP of Global Operations
SkySpecs

Seminar Abstract:

In today’s world, tech startups are often held in high esteem as thriving innovation engines, whereas traditional companies sometimes struggle with getting new, revolutionary products to market quickly. What makes startups able to do this so efficiently? Do the same rules apply to aerospace startups, where the tolerance for risk is much lower?

Interestingly, many common themes can be traced between tech startup operating philosophies and those of the Lockheed Martin Skunk Works, founded in the 1940s by Clarence L. “Kelly” Johnson, a U-M Aero alum and one of the most famous aircraft designers in history. The Skunk Works achieved legendary status in the aerospace industry as an innovation factory through a unique set of operating principles, now known as “Kelly’s 14 Rules.”

This seminar will focus on the fundamentals of the innovation process, technology development principles, and best practices for “crossing the chasm,” drawing on numerous historical examples and startup stories. Are the “14 Rules” still relevant today? Have tech startups discovered a new secret sauce? How do you foster a culture where team members think vigorously outside the box to invent the impossible?

Bio:

Ben is currently the Vice President of Global Operations at SkySpecs, a venture-backed commercial drone startup in Ann Arbor, MI focused on at-scale autonomous robotics technologies in the wind energy industry. Since launching its autonomous drone inspection product in April 2017, SkySpecs has safely inspected over 150,000 wind turbine blades - both onshore and offshore - at more than 1,500 wind farms on 5 continents.

In his current role, Ben leads a team of 150+ pilots, engineers, technicians, analysts, and operations specialists around the world in the planning, execution, and global scaling of SkySpecs programs and products.

Prior to joining SkySpecs, Ben was a Senior Systems Engineer and graduate of the Engineering Leadership Development Program at the Lockheed Martin Skunk Works in Palmdale, CA. While at the Skunk Works, Ben worked on a variety of revolutionary autonomous aircraft projects from conceptual design through flight test. He graduated from the University of Michigan in April 2011 with a BSE in Aerospace Engineering and from the University of Southern California in December 2014 with an MS in Product Development Engineering.

Outside of work, Ben serves on the Industry Advisory Board of the University of Michigan's Department of Aerospace Engineering and as an appointee of Governor Gretchen Whitmer to the Unmanned Aircraft Systems Task Force for the State of Michigan. Ben was elected to the Board of Directors of the American Institute of Aeronautics & Astronautics (AIAA) in 2015, making him the youngest Director in AIAA's 85-year history. He has also served as Vice President of the nonprofit Los Angeles County Air Show, Inc.

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Class / Instruction Thu, 01 Oct 2020 11:09:57 -0400 2020-10-02T13:30:00-04:00 2020-10-02T15:00:00-04:00 Off Campus Location Aerospace Engineering Class / Instruction Ben Marchionna
Black Students in Aerospace [BSA] Movie Event (October 2, 2020 6:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/77826 77826-19933615@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, October 2, 2020 6:00pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Aerospace Engineering

The Black Students in Aerospace (BSA), a new student organization within the Department of Aerospace engineering, would like to invite you to attend our upcoming movie night event.

Over the course of this summer, there has been a resurgence of support, activism, and protests for Black Lives Matter and other human rights issues that have cast a spotlight on the systemic racism present in society. Our organization felt it was important to tie these issues back to the department in order to continue the discourse as well as to bring visibility to the ways their peers are affected.

Because of this, we decided to host a viewing of the documentary I Am Not Your Negro by James Baldwin. The movie will be followed by a guided discussion with a panel of Black engineering students, alumni, and professors from U-M including Alec D. Gallimore, Robert J. Vlasic Dean of Engineering. 

Friday October 2nd
Movie: 6:00pm - 7:30pm (Eastern Time)
Panel: 7:30pm - 8:30pm (Eastern Time)

Please RSVP at https://tinyurl.com/bsa-movie-night

***It is important to note that the film includes brief moments of graphic images, specifically images of lynchings and police brutality.

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Lecture / Discussion Wed, 30 Sep 2020 12:22:25 -0400 2020-10-02T18:00:00-04:00 2020-10-02T20:30:00-04:00 Off Campus Location Aerospace Engineering Lecture / Discussion [BSA] Upcoming Movie Event Flyer
Chair's Distinguished Lecture: A New Approach to Engineering for Safety and Cybersecurity (October 8, 2020 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/76298 76298-19681596@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Thursday, October 8, 2020 4:00pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Aerospace Engineering

Prof. Nancy Leveson
Dept. of Aeronautics and Astronautics
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Aerospace and other systems are becoming increasingly complex and software-intensive. At the same time, human roles are changing along with the types of errors that the operators of these systems are making. These changes in engineering are leading to new causes of accidents. But the traditional approaches to safety engineering, created 50 to 70 years ago, are based on assumptions about system design that are no longer true. In this presentation I’ll suggest what is needed to prevent unnecessary losses, including a paradigm change in how we think about and deal with safety, i.e., basing system engineering on system theory (which is where it started a long time ago).

System theory provides the ability to overcome the deficiencies of traditional analytic reduction and to create new, more powerful approaches to the safety and security of today’s and tomorrow’s systems. Our new systems-theoretic approach to safety is being used successfully in just about every industry around the world and on the most complex systems humans have tried to create. It has been shown through both scientific evaluation and empirical use to be both more powerful and less expensive than the traditional approaches.

About the speaker...

Nancy Leveson is Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT. Prof. Leveson conducts research on all aspects of system safety including modeling and analysis, design, operations, management, and and human factors and the larger arena of system engineering. Her techniques are used in a wide variety of safety-critical industries including aerospace, transportation, chemical plants, nuclear power, medical devices, and many others. One particular common element throughout all her work is an emphasis on applying systems theory to complex systems. She has received many honors, most recently the 2020 IEEE Medal for Environmental and Safety Technologies. She was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2000.

Dr. Leveson is author of two books: Safeware: System Safety and Computers (1995) published by Addison-Wesley and Engineering a Safer World (2012) published by MIT Press. She consults extensively in many industries on the ways to prevent accidents and has served on numerous national and international committees and accident investigations including being an expert consultant for the Columbia Accident Investigation Board, the Presidential Commission on Deepwater Horizon, the Baker Panel on the Texas City explosion, and a Navy committee investigating one of the V-22 Osprey accidents as well as lesser-known accidents.

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Class / Instruction Tue, 01 Sep 2020 14:20:39 -0400 2020-10-08T16:00:00-04:00 2020-10-08T17:15:00-04:00 Off Campus Location Aerospace Engineering Class / Instruction Nancy Leveson
Fall 2020 - AE285 Seminar Series, Impact of Engineering Ethics - Boeing 737 Max, George Halow, UM (October 9, 2020 1:30pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/78281 78281-20002862@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, October 9, 2020 1:30pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Aerospace Engineering

George Halow
Professor of Practice
Aerospace Engineering
University of Michigan

Among the most critical traits of effective leaders is ethics. Ethics are a fundamental requirement for leading people, engendering the trust and confidence of your customers, co-workers, and the community at large, and for delivering the best and most reliable products and services. Furthermore, they embody the “right things to do”. It has been said, “it takes years to build a reputation for strong ethics, and just one single lapse to risk destroying it for years to come.” This is especially true in business.

This seminar examines a high-profile breach in ethics – what happened, the immediate impacts, and the lasting legacies it left.

About the speaker...
George Halow is Professor of Practice in Aerospace Engineering, a position he has held since May 1, 2019.

Prior to this, George served 31 years at Ford Motor Company in multiple capacities, including Chief Program Engineer for multiple vehicle lines, including Expedition, Navigator, Ranger, Crown Victoria, Grand Marquis, and Town Car, where he had lead responsibility for both the business and technical elements of running a vehicle program, Chief Functional Engineer, responsible for product design for interior and exterior vehicle components and systems, globally, and many other positions in engineering, manufacturing, and busines strategy.

George’s educational background includes an MBA from INSEAD in France, a Master’s in Mechanical Engineering from Cornell University, and a Bachelor’s in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Maryland.

Throughout his career, George has been very active in support of universities – he was Ford’s Executive Champion for the University of Michigan Student Vehicle Teams, Ford’s representative on the Georgia Tech Ray C. Anderson Sustainability Executive Advisory Board, and gave lectures to students on Ethics & Integrity, Innovation, Leadership, Sustainability, and Career Building. He has published teaching materials on business ethics through the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan, marketed by both Michigan and Harvard, and used by over 30 universities worldwide.

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Class / Instruction Wed, 07 Oct 2020 10:50:10 -0400 2020-10-09T13:30:00-04:00 2020-10-09T15:00:00-04:00 Off Campus Location Aerospace Engineering Class / Instruction George Halow
Chair's Distinguished Lecture: Formal Verification of Automobile and Aerospace Software Systems (October 15, 2020 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/77995 77995-19949625@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Thursday, October 15, 2020 4:00pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Aerospace Engineering

Jean-Baptiste Jeannin
Assistant Professor
Aerospace Engineering
University of Michigan


Software is increasingly present in our transportation systems, from the cars we drive to work to the aircraft we (used to) fly across the country. One particular aspect of this software is that it is often safety-critical, meaning that a serious bug in the software could lead to damage to the vehicle or even loss of life. For this reason the most critical software – such as collision avoidance software – must be thoroughly verified and validated. Formal verification provides a computer-checked proof that the software satisfies a given property, thus providing the highest level of verification and validation. In this talk I will show some recent results of my group on formally verifying several algorithms from the automobile and aerospace industries. I will first present a formal verification of several maneuvers for car collision avoidance, including turning-only maneuvers and braking-while-swerving maneuvers. I will then show how to verify recent designs of aircraft collision avoidance systems that use neural networks, and how to better design them so they don't exhibit bugs. Finally, I will show how to bring formal verification to computational science, with a verification of the Lax theorem for finite difference schemes.

About the speaker...

Jean-Baptiste Jeannin is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. His research focuses on formal verification of cyber-physical systems and computational schemes, particularly applied to aerospace systems, as well as design and analysis of programming languages. Prior to Michigan, he was a Researcher at Samsung Research America and a Postdoctoral Fellow at Carnegie Mellon University, working with André Platzer. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Cornell University in 2013, where he was advised by Dexter Kozen.

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Class / Instruction Wed, 30 Sep 2020 16:14:15 -0400 2020-10-15T16:00:00-04:00 2020-10-15T17:15:00-04:00 Off Campus Location Aerospace Engineering Class / Instruction Jean-Baptiste Jeannin
Fall 2020 - AE285 Seminar Series, Environmental & Social Sustainability and Leadership in Corporate Citizenship, John Viera, UM (October 16, 2020 1:30pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/78501 78501-20052320@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, October 16, 2020 1:30pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Aerospace Engineering

John Viera
Executive in Residence
Erb Institute
University of Michigan


An increasing number of companies, large and small, are developing core strategies and engaging in projects that address environmental and social challenges in our society. The social efforts often reflect strong corporate citizenship cultures at these companies. Many engineers are seeking to work for companies that are engaging in these types of projects. During this seminar the speaker will highlight such efforts within a heavy manufacturing entity, in this case the automotive sector. Such efforts can be easily aligned with potential efforts within the aerospace industry.

About the speaker…

John Viera was most recently the former Global Director, Sustainability & Vehicle Environmental Matters at Ford Motor Company, a position he held since January, 2007. Mr. Viera was responsible for developing global sustainable business plans and policies, interfacing with global regulatory bodies, reporting externally on the company’s environmental and social performance, and leading the company’s engagement and partnerships with non-government organizations (NGOs) and other external stakeholders.

Viera has held several positions within Ford Motor Company during his 30 year tenure. For the first thirteen years of his career, he worked in the company’s Truck Division with responsibilities that included leading the Company efforts in the development of its first natural gas-fueled pickup trucks and also leading the Company’s Global Truck Computer Aided Design organization.

In 1997, Viera was appointed manager, Plant Engineering Vehicle Team, Explorer and Mountaineer programs. Located in Louisville, Kentucky, Viera was responsible for all on-site engineering personnel for Explorer plants in Louisville, St. Louis, Missouri, and Valencia, Venezuela. He returned to Michigan in 1999 to become the chief engineer for the Ranger Compact Pickup and Electric Ranger. In 2002, Viera took on the company’s mid-term cost reduction initiative, building a team which delivered $1.2 billion of savings in eighteen months, beating his assigned target by over a year. In 2003, Viera became chief engineer for the Expedition and Navigator Full Size SUVs, with complete responsibility for current and future model programs.

Mr. Viera recently served on the advisory boards at Georgia Tech in Atlanta, the Graham Institute of Environmental Sustainability at the University of Michigan, the advisory board of Sustainable Brands, and the Energy Advisory Committee at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, as well as the chair of the Department of Homeland Security’s Sustainability and Efficiency Task Force in Washington, D.C.

A native of Chicago, Viera attended the University of Michigan, receiving his Bachelors of Science in Mechanical Engineering in 1984 as well as a Masters in Business Administration in 1992.

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Class / Instruction Tue, 13 Oct 2020 14:23:53 -0400 2020-10-16T13:30:00-04:00 2020-10-16T15:00:00-04:00 Off Campus Location Aerospace Engineering Class / Instruction John Viera
Aerospace GSAC DEI Community Forum (October 19, 2020 6:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/78220 78220-19994965@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Monday, October 19, 2020 6:00pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Aerospace Engineering

Please virtually join us for the inaugural student/post-doc community forum organized by the Aerospace GSAC DEI sub-committee! At this forum, we will update the community on this year's goals and the progress made on current DEI initiatives. After this we will provide an open floor for your comments and feedback so that we can be sure that we are properly representing your voices.

Please RSVP: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdOsbs9R6QZgIbYtkjO7zvAZTuNAOgRw48-Bm71iPQ_yTzSGA/viewform?usp=sf_link.
If you would like to pre-submit a question/comment anonymously or because you are not able to attend, you may submit these through the RSVP form. As we work together to improve the climate in our department we ask that you will read and follow our community guidelines: https://docs.google.com/document/d/12uiiFuuqQWChgGRazttYYEH58VqXYcDY-gAvYrm2ggE/edit?usp=sharing

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Livestream / Virtual Tue, 06 Oct 2020 10:33:54 -0400 2020-10-19T18:00:00-04:00 2020-10-19T19:00:00-04:00 Off Campus Location Aerospace Engineering Livestream / Virtual Flyer for the community forum
[Aero Homecoming] Chair's Distinguished Lecture: Birds, Drones, and Smart Structures (October 22, 2020 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/76161 76161-19669631@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Thursday, October 22, 2020 4:00pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Aerospace Engineering

Daniel J. Inman, Ph.D.
Harm Buning Collegiate Professor
Department of Aerospace Engineering
University of Michigan

Gliding birds perform some interesting non-aircraft like shapes with their wings and tails. Birds also respond to gusts in unique ways. These observations have motivated the study of shape changing, or morphing aircraft. Several unique uses of piezoceramic composites and shape memory alloys to achieve advantageous airfoil shapes are presented inspired by the incredible performance avian species achieve. The aerodynamics and control that birds use in gliding result in efficiencies in performance not yet realized by fixed wing aircraft. With the advent of smart, multifunctional composites, it is possible to implement motions inspired by avian gliding in small, unmanned air vehicles (UAV). Initially motivated by the casual observation of flight control motions made by birds, morphing research has proceeded with only limited understanding of how and why birds use their aerodynamic surfaces for flight control and gust alleviation. A summary of relevant previous results from two fields: avian biology and morphing aircraft, is presented followed by some current results on real time computing for learning control to attempt to emulate a bird’s ability to fly-by-feel.

About the speaker...

Daniel J. Inman received his Ph.D. from Michigan State University in Mechanical Engineering in 1980 and is the Harm Buning Collegiate Professor of former Chair of the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Michigan, Since 1980, he has published eight books (on vibration, energy harvesting, control, statics, and dynamics), eight software manuals, 20 book chapters, over 400 journal papers and 650 proceedings papers, given 65 keynote or plenary lectures, graduated 67 Ph.D. students and supervised more than 75 MS degrees. He works in the area of applying smart structures to solve aerospace engineering problems including energy harvesting, structural health monitoring, vibration suppression and morphing aircraft. He is a Fellow of AIAA, ASME, IIAV, SEM and AAM.

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Class / Instruction Tue, 06 Oct 2020 17:53:19 -0400 2020-10-22T16:00:00-04:00 2020-10-22T17:15:00-04:00 Off Campus Location Aerospace Engineering Class / Instruction Daniel J. Inman
Dr. Nahum Melamed on Asteroid Interception (October 22, 2020 7:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/78685 78685-20105421@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Thursday, October 22, 2020 7:00pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics

Join the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics this Thursday, October 22nd, for a lecture by Dr. Nahum Melamed on Applying Guidance, Navigation, and Controls Solutions to the Problem of Asteroid Interception for Planetary Defense.

Dr. Melamed is a project leader in the Embedded Control Systems Department in the Guidance and Control Subdivision at The Aerospace Corporation who validates and certifies the flight software and mission parameters for the Delta IV launch vehicles, and conducts planetary defense technical and policy studies. He earned a PhD in Aerospace Engineering from Georgia Tech.

If you're interested please add your name to the spreadsheet linked below.

When: Thursday, 22 October 2020 at 7pm ET (4pm PT)
Where: Zoom (see link below, passcode 424378)

We hope to see you there!!

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Lecture / Discussion Tue, 20 Oct 2020 10:08:36 -0400 2020-10-22T19:00:00-04:00 2020-10-22T20:15:00-04:00 Off Campus Location American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Lecture / Discussion lecture flyer
[Aero Homecoming] 2020 State of the Department Address and Award Ceremony (October 23, 2020 12:30pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/78262 78262-19998928@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, October 23, 2020 12:30pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Aerospace Engineering

Dr. Tony Waas is the Richard A. Auhll Department Chair and Felix Pawlowski Professor of Aerospace Engineering. On October 23rd at 12:30 PM, Dr. Waas will share the current state of the Department of Aerospace Engineering and his vision for the academic year with alumni, faculty, and students. Alumni and student award recipients will be recognized during a special award ceremony directly following the Department address.

Please register for these and other Homecoming Events by Monday, October 19th, 2020.

Registration link: https://bit.ly/33y6KgC

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Presentation Wed, 07 Oct 2020 10:01:26 -0400 2020-10-23T12:30:00-04:00 2020-10-23T13:00:00-04:00 Off Campus Location Aerospace Engineering Presentation Dr. Tony Waas, Aerospace Engineering Department Chair Photo
[Aero Homecoming] Cultural and Career Panel Discussion (October 23, 2020 1:30pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/78275 78275-20002861@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, October 23, 2020 1:30pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Aerospace Engineering

Panelists -
Dr. Anthony Waas (UM Aero Dept Chair)
Kevin Michaels (President, AeroDynamic Advisory)
Kathryn Elliott (Chief of Performance & Aerothermal Systems, Rolls-Royce Corporation)
Aisha Bowe (Founder & CEO, Stemboard)
Corey Brooker (Staff Systems Engineer, Human Space Flight - Project Orion)
Moderator: Maddy Eichenberg (Aerospace Engineering Junior)

Culture and Careers Panel Discussion is with accomplished executives in the Aerospace Enterprise, who either started out with a degree in Aerospace Engineering, or who may have come in to the enterprise at some point in their careers.

Purpose - To give students the broadest range of input as they shape their own careers and plans.

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Class / Instruction Fri, 16 Oct 2020 16:50:36 -0400 2020-10-23T13:30:00-04:00 2020-10-23T15:00:00-04:00 Off Campus Location Aerospace Engineering Class / Instruction Cultural and Career Panelist
Chair's Distinguished Lecture: Abstractions for Robot Code (October 29, 2020 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/76197 76197-19671630@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Thursday, October 29, 2020 4:00pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Aerospace Engineering

Sayan Mitra
Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Distributed robotics is poised to transformed manufacturing, transportation, agriculture, delivery, and exploration. Following the trends in cloud, mobile, and machine learning applications, finding the right programming abstractions is key in unlocking this potential. A robot's code needs to sense the environment, control the hardware, and communicate with other robots. Current programming languages do not provide the necessary hardware platform-independent abstractions, and therefore, developing robot applications require detailed knowledge of signal processing, control, path planning, network protocols, and various platform-specific details. Further, porting applications across hardware platforms becomes tedious. In this talk, I will present our recent explorations in finding good abstractions for robot code. The end result of our research is a new language called Koord which abstracts platform-specific functions for sensing, communication, and low-level control and makes platform-independent control and coordination code portable and modularly verifiable.

About the speaker...

Sayan Mitra is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research is centered around safe autonomy. He holds a PhD from MIT, MSc from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, and an undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering from Jadavpur University, Kolkata. Sayan was a postdoctoral fellow at CalTech, and held visiting faculty positions at Oxford University, TU Vienna, and Kirtland Air Force Research Laboratory. At Illinois, his research group has created a number of the leading software tools for programming and verification of autonomous systems and have authored more than one hundred peer reviewed articles. A textbook authored by Sayan “Verifying cyber-physical systems: A path to safe autonomy” will be published by the MIT Press in February 2021. Sayan’s work has been recognized by the National Science Foundation's CAREER Award in 2011, AFOSR Young Investigator Research Program Award in 2012, IEEE-HKN C. Holmes MacDonald Outstanding Teaching Award (2013), a RiSE Fellowship, a Siebel Fellowship, and several best paper awards.

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Class / Instruction Tue, 01 Sep 2020 14:22:04 -0400 2020-10-29T16:00:00-04:00 2020-10-29T17:15:00-04:00 Off Campus Location Aerospace Engineering Class / Instruction Sayan Mitra
Fall 2020 - AE285 Seminar Series, Stealth…An Airplane Design Challenge, Grant Carichner, California Polytechnic State University (October 30, 2020 1:30pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/78969 78969-20162610@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, October 30, 2020 1:30pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Aerospace Engineering

Grant Carichner
Adjunct Professor
California State Polytechnic University, Pomona

Stealth is a design characteristic that attempts to minimize a reflected signal from an illuminated object. These reflected signals can be radar, IR, visual, or acoustic. For military platforms stealth is one way to improve survivability. In the late 70s the first airplane designed with stealth as its main feature was the F-117A. It proved that major improvements in survivability were possible using entirely new design criteria. All modern military vehicles incorporate stealth to some degree in their design.

However, the challenge is that designing for stealth compromises vehicle performance and cost. In the real world this is a difficult tradeoff. Improved stealth characteristics are very costly and must be considered carefully compared to other characteristics such as speed and altitude.

Before the F-117A there was an earlier airplane that had some major stealth components. Do you know what airplane this is? Find out on Friday.

About the speaker...

Mr. Carichner went to work for the Lockheed Skunk Works after earning his BS in Engineering and MS in Engineering degrees from UCLA. He retired in 2013 after 48 years at the Skunk Works where he worked on most of the company’s high-profile programs. During his career he started out as an aerodynamicist and eventually became Head of Aerodynamics for the Skunk Works. Future program assignments were either Chief Engineer or Program Manager positions. As Chief Engineer for the JASSM Program he was selected as Lockheed’s Inventor of the Year.

The last 15 years of his career were dedicated to lighter-than-air designs. He created the Aerocraft Program whose design resulted in a hybrid airship demonstrator that had many airplane flight characteristics that has changed the course of future airship design.

Currently, Mr. Carichner teaches Airplane Design at Cal Poly Pomona
Mr. Carichner has written two textbooks. One on airplane design and another on airship design. Both books are published by the AIAA.

Fundamentals of Aircraft and Airship Design: Volume I - Aircraft Design
Fundamentals of Aircraft and Airship Design: Volume II - Airship Design and Case Studies

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Class / Instruction Tue, 27 Oct 2020 15:59:36 -0400 2020-10-30T13:30:00-04:00 2020-10-30T15:00:00-04:00 Off Campus Location Aerospace Engineering Class / Instruction Grant Carichner
Chair's Distinguished Lecture: Battling TBI: High-Rate Deformation of Polymeric Cellular Solids (November 5, 2020 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/76191 76191-19671624@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Thursday, November 5, 2020 4:00pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Aerospace Engineering

Leslie Lamberson
Associate Professor
Mechanical Engineering
Colorado School of Mines

Polymer foams, a cellular solid comprising of a gas and solid phase, are used extensively for impact protection applications due to their light weight and high energy absorption. One specific application of interest is their use in combat helmet liners to protect service members from Traumatic Brain Injuries (TBIs), although they are also heavily leveraged in the packing industry, medical, aerospace and automotive fields, to name a few. These protective applications all have the common characteristic of dynamically applied loading leading to high strain-rate material deformation. Typically, polymer foams have low impedance and exhibit strong rate-dependent mechanical behavior; consequently, novel dynamic experimental techniques and metrologies need to be implemented and aid in the development of physics-based constitutive models for these cellular systems in loading regimes of real-world interest. As such, this talk focuses on quantitative microstructural characterization of open cell polyurethane foams and its relation to bulk response, their compressive behavior across six orders of magnitude in strain rates and utilizing a non-parametric formulation of the Virtual Fields Method to extract dynamic material behavior. How these efforts are leading us to explore the design space of microarchitected materials for next-generation protective systems will also be discussed.

About the speaker...

Leslie Lamberson is an Associate Professor in Mechanical Engineering with affiliation in Materials Science at the Colorado School of Mines. Her area of expertise is in mechanics of materials under extreme conditions. She earned her B.S. in Aerospace Engineering and B.A. in Dance Performance from the University of Michigan, her M.S. in Aerospace Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology, and her Ph.D. in Aeronautics from the California Institute of Technology. Prior to her faculty position, Dr. Lamberson was a postdoctoral research scholar with K.T. Ramesh in the Center for Advanced Metallic and Ceramic Systems at the Johns Hopkins University. A former Lockheed Martin “Skunk Works” engineer, in 2013 Leslie was a NASA Glenn Faculty Fellow in the Materials and Structures under Extreme Conditions Division. She is the recipient of an ONR Young Investigator Award in 2017, an NSF CAREER award in 2018, and is currently an Associate Editor for the journal Strain.

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Class / Instruction Tue, 01 Sep 2020 14:32:52 -0400 2020-11-05T16:00:00-05:00 2020-11-05T17:15:00-05:00 Off Campus Location Aerospace Engineering Class / Instruction Leslie Lamberson
Fall 2020 - AE285 Seminar Series, Expectations, Perceptions and Prejudice in the Workplace, Karen Albrecht, Retired Lockheed Martin Executive (November 6, 2020 1:30pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/79138 79138-20215739@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, November 6, 2020 1:30pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Aerospace Engineering

Karen Albrecht
Lockheed Martin Executive (retired)

As you begin your career in the Workplace, you enter with certain expectations, and perceptions about what it will be in the Engineering Workplace. This course will provide insight on how your personal expectations and perceptions can be different than others and different from the organization. We will explore how each person’s personal prejudices can add/or detract to an expectation or perception that is not anywhere near the reality of the situation. This class will be interactive and will include viewing a video prior to the class, taking a survey a few minutes before the class and it will include polls during the class. There will be an opportunity to ask questions through the chat mode. Karen will use experiences from her nearly 40 year career as examples. As this course includes examples from a phenomenal career, there can be no pictures or video taken except for the “official” UM Aero Video that will be used only for AE 285 students in this class.

About the speaker...

Karen’s illustrious career as an Aerospace Engineer began at NASA JSC where she developed analytic methods for composite primary structure under fatigue and fracture mechanics for Space Shuttle. Karen participated in the Longitudinal Study of Astronaut Health (LSAH).

At Lockheed Martin, she worked on Missile Launching Systems, Basic Research, Commercial Aircraft, Undersea Systems, SMART Structures, Robotics and high performance Military Aircraft. She developed embedded fiber optics technology. She is a Master Black Belt in 6-sigma and Lean Engineering.

Karen serves on several university engineering and non-profit boards. Karen is the 2007 Distinguished Alumnus –Aerospace for the UM.

Karen is now CEO of Karen Albrecht Enterprises a Career and Personal Development Organization. Karen has delivered over 200 seminars for courses she developed and gives her time and knowledge to help students navigate career fairs and resume. Karen has set up an endowment fund for Aerospace undergraduate education and provides scholarships for Aerospace Engineering students who need the support to finish their education at the University of Michigan. She has already given out 10 scholarships to Aero students.

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Class / Instruction Tue, 03 Nov 2020 09:55:08 -0500 2020-11-06T13:30:00-05:00 2020-11-06T15:00:00-05:00 Off Campus Location Aerospace Engineering Class / Instruction Karen Albrecht
Chair's Distinguished Lecture | Trust and Transparency on Modern Flight Decks: Why They Matter and How to Support Them (November 12, 2020 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/79293 79293-20264793@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Thursday, November 12, 2020 4:00pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Aerospace Engineering

Nadine Sarter
Professor
Industrial and Operations Engineering, Aerospace Engineering and Robotics
Director, Center for Ergonomics

The introduction of high levels of automation and autonomy into the aviation industry has helped improve the precision and efficiency of operations. At the same time, it has created challenges for flight crews and resulted in incidents and accidents due to breakdowns in pilot-automation interaction. These breakdowns highlight the need to better support trust calibration and system transparency. Trust (the attitude that an agent will help achieve an individual’s goals in a situation characterized by uncertainty and vulnerability; Lee and See, 2004) is a critical intervening factor affecting automation usage. Misuse happens when pilots trust an automated system too much and over rely on the automation. Disuse happens when pilots lack trust in an automated system which can lead to the slow adoption, and even complete rejection of systems. Fostering safe and appropriate use of modern technologies requires better support for trust calibration which, in turn, calls for improved system transparency where the machine agent shares information regarding its status, reasoning, abilities, and plans for future actions with the human operator in a timely and effective manner. In this talk, aviation mishaps will be examined to illustrate problems with trust and transparency and suggest possible solutions to this challenge to human-machine teaming.

About the speaker...

Nadine Sarter is a Professor of Industrial and Operations Engineering, Aerospace Engineering and Robotics at the University of Michigan where she also serves as Director of the Center for Ergonomics. Her primary research interests include (1) human-machine teaming, (2) operator trust in autonomous systems, (3) adaptive function allocation, (4) attention management, (5) multimodal interface design, (6) and the design of decision aids for high-tempo operations. She has conducted her work in a variety of application domains, including aviation and space, medicine, military operations, and the automotive industry. Dr. Sarter is a Member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and a Fellow of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (HFES). She serves as Associate Editor for ‘Human Factors’, the HFES’ flagship journal, and has contributed as an invited member on numerous government and scientific committees, most recently the National Academies Panel on Human Factors Science at the Army Research Laboratory (ARL), the Human Performance Expert Panel To Inform The Air Force Strategy 2030, the National Academies Expert Panel on FAA Staffing Issues and the FAA Flight Deck Automation Working Group. She also served as an expert witness in the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) Investigative Hearing on Asiana Flight 214.

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Class / Instruction Mon, 09 Nov 2020 15:53:12 -0500 2020-11-12T16:00:00-05:00 2020-11-12T17:15:00-05:00 Off Campus Location Aerospace Engineering Class / Instruction Nadine Sarter
Fall 2020 - AE285 Seminar Series, Extreme Physiology: Engineering Meetings Physiology in Space (November 13, 2020 1:30pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/79388 79388-20294464@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, November 13, 2020 1:30pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Aerospace Engineering

Dr. Kathryn Clark
Associate Chair, Movement Science, School of Kinesiology
Adjunct Associate Research Scientist, Aerospace Engineering

Space enthusiasts have been talking about going to Mars since we launched the first astronauts into space. We have not actually travelled very far from our home planet and we are only beginning to understand physiological changes and the potential for using science and engineering to overcome those challenges. For example, we know we on Earth are protected by the van Allen belts. Can we find a way to protect astronauts who travel beyond the 36,000 miles of van Allen belt coverage from the radiation? Can we overcome the loss of blood cells, muscle mass, proprioception, and immune system function? Some of these are scientific questions; others are engineering problems to solve. NASA and her international partners must work together to solve these problems if we are ever to travel back to the Moon, on to Mars, and beyond. This generation of scientists and engineers are going to be the people who overcome these challenges. A side benefit is for people all over the world to overcome differences and work together on this greatest of adventures.

About the speaker...

Dr. Kathy Clark is currently a Movement Science Lecturer in the University of Michigan School of Kinesiology. She received her Ph.D. in Kinesiology from the University of Michigan. Prior to her time at the school, Dr. Clark was a member of the Stafford/Anfimov Advisory Panel and the Stafford-Covey Return to Flight Task Group at NASA. She also served as Chief Scientist at NASA for both the Human Exploration & Development of Space Enterprise and the International Space Station.
Dr. Clark is a professional speaker who uses her experience to motivate and inspire others to reach for the stars in their careers. She also works to promote education with groups like the Jean-Michel Cousteau Society, the Square One Education Network, the Argos Foundation, the National Marine Sanctuaries, the Sea World Hubbs Institute, SAS Games, the National Space Grant Foundation, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s After School All Stars, and the 27 Foundation.

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Class / Instruction Fri, 13 Nov 2020 08:50:25 -0500 2020-11-13T13:30:00-05:00 2020-11-13T15:00:00-05:00 Off Campus Location Aerospace Engineering Class / Instruction
Elsie MacGill Women in Aerospace Conference (November 14, 2020 10:00am) https://events.umich.edu/event/73903 73903-18393017@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Saturday, November 14, 2020 10:00am
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Women in Aeronautics and Astronautics

The Elsie MacGill Women in Aerospace Conference is a one-day virtual event dedicated to bringing together students, academics, and professionals in the aerospace industry. In honor of Elsie MacGill, the first woman to receive an aeronautical engineering degree, the conference will focus on overcoming adversity and creating a sustainable environment for inclusion and diversity. Representatives from a variety of companies are invited from all over the country to speak, mentor students, and support our mission. This conference will include keynote speakers from NASA and industry, several tech talks, networking events, professional development events and other workshops throughout the day.

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Conference / Symposium Mon, 09 Nov 2020 12:47:26 -0500 2020-11-14T10:00:00-05:00 2020-11-14T18:30:00-05:00 Off Campus Location Women in Aeronautics and Astronautics Conference / Symposium Flyer
Defense Dissertation: Aerodynamic Shape Optimization with Time-Spectral Flutter Adjoint (November 19, 2020 10:00am) https://events.umich.edu/event/79324 79324-20272788@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Thursday, November 19, 2020 10:00am
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Aerospace Engineering

Sicheng He ** Aerospace Engineering PhD Candidate

Virtual- Zoom (Please register before hand)
https://umich.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJcudOuurT4vG9y33TQA1IDLv10GbWMd8yaJ

Flutter and limit cycle oscillation (LCO) are important phenomena
that need to be considered in aircraft design. To avoid them in flight
envelope, we can conduct a multidisciplinary design optimization
(MDO) to maximize the flutter speed by changing the wing aerodynamic shape.

One challenge is that we need to simulate flutter or LCO efficiently
using high fidelity computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model in the
transonic regime. We propose a coupled Newton-Krylov method to
solve the time-spectral aeroelastic equations. We observe that the
proposed method is more efficient than the time-accurate method.

Another challenge is that we need to compute the flutter speed derivative with respect to a large number of design variables. We propose the use of coupled adjoint to address that. Using this adjoint solver, we conduct an aerodynamic shape optimization of a wing and the flutter speed increases by 118%.

Finally, for mode based aerostructural optimization problems, we identify a computational bottleneck related with the structural mode and natural frequency derivative computation. We propose two formulae based on reverse algorithmic differentiation to reduce the cost from number of design variables computations to a single computation.

Defense Committee Members:
Prof. Joaquim R. R. A. Martins (Chair)
Prof. Bogdan Epureanu (Cognate)
Prof. Carlos E. S. Cesnik (Member)
Assoc.Prof. Krzysttof Fidkowski (Member)

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Presentation Tue, 10 Nov 2020 15:07:32 -0500 2020-11-19T10:00:00-05:00 2020-11-19T11:00:00-05:00 Off Campus Location Aerospace Engineering Presentation Sicheng He
Chair's Distinguished Lecture: Aerion: Design Technology Behind Revolutionizing Sustainable Global Mobility (November 19, 2020 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/79414 79414-20317943@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Thursday, November 19, 2020 4:00pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Aerospace Engineering

Alex Egeler
EVP of Aerion Technologies

Aerion is committed to changing the face of global mobility by dramatically increasing the speed of transportation in an environmentally sustainable way. The first step towards this goal is the AS2, a carbon-neutral Mach 1.4 supersonic business jet that is slated for entry into service in 2027. To support this vision, Aerion Technologies is an innovation center located in Palo Alto, CA that develops tools and infrastructure to rapidly respond to the needs of the company and provide automation to engineering tasks and beyond. This seminar will discuss the capabilities that Aerion Technologies provides and how that enables Aerion to design the revolutionary concepts required to alter the way we think about travel.

About the speaker...

Alex Egeler is the EVP of Aerion Technologies, leading the team in Palo Alto, CA. He has worked at Aerion for 7 years, starting as a software developer and inlet designer. His background is in aerodynamic shape optimization, with a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Johns Hopkins University and an M.S. in Aero/Astro Engineering from Stanford. He also worked in underwater missile launching systems at Northrop Grumman for 9 years with a focus on systems engineering and analysis software development.

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Class / Instruction Mon, 16 Nov 2020 08:45:37 -0500 2020-11-19T16:00:00-05:00 2020-11-19T17:15:00-05:00 Off Campus Location Aerospace Engineering Class / Instruction Alex Egeler
Fall 2020 - AE285 Seminar Series, Space is Open for Business, Tess Hatch, Bessemer Venture Partners (November 20, 2020 1:30pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/79415 79415-20317944@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, November 20, 2020 1:30pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Aerospace Engineering

Tess Hatch
Vice President
Bessemer Venture Partners

Entrepreneurs are flocking to the final frontier, where Moore’s Law has unleashed massive, enduring opportunities. This is how humanity will colonize cis-lunar, the moon, asteroids, Mars and beyond — through the emergence of a distributed, commercial ecosystem infinitely more powerful than any single company or government.

About the speaker...

Tess is a vice president at Bessemer Venture Partners fostering entrepreneurship of frontier technology, specifically the commercialization of space, drones, autonomous vehicles, and the future of agriculture and food technology. She wants to invest in technology and people who believe as strongly as she does that frontier technology will develop solutions for societal problems.

Tess earned a Bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Michigan and a Master’s degree in aeronautics and astronautics engineering from Stanford. She went on to work for Boeing and then SpaceX where she worked with the government on integrating its payloads with the Falcon9 rocket. Tess was recently named Forbes’ 30 Under 30 in Venture Capital.

Tess is passionate about space exploration and imagines a future where we all travel to space. She hopes to one day take a trip herself.

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Class / Instruction Mon, 16 Nov 2020 09:08:23 -0500 2020-11-20T13:30:00-05:00 2020-11-20T15:00:00-05:00 Off Campus Location Aerospace Engineering Class / Instruction Tess Hatch
Control Allocation of Flexible Aircraft for Load Alleviation (December 8, 2020 2:30pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/79628 79628-20486026@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Tuesday, December 8, 2020 2:30pm
Location:
Organized By: Aerospace Engineering

As wing designs aim for higher aerodynamic efficiency, the underlying aircraft structure becomes more flexible, requiring additional features to alleviate the loads encountered from gusts and maneuvers. While alleviating loads, it is desirable to minimize the deviations from the original flight trajectory.

In this work, a dynamic control allocation method which exploits redundant control effectors for maneuver and gust load alleviation is proposed for flexible aircraft. The control architecture decouples the two objectives of load alleviation and rigid body trajectory tracking by exploiting the null space between the input and the rigid body output. A reduced-dimensional null space input is established, which affects the flexible output (but not the rigid body output) when passed through a null space filter to generate incremental control signals. This null space input is determined to maintain the flexible output of the aircraft within specified values, thereby achieving load alleviation.

A receding horizon approach to generate the trajectory of the null space input is developed based on linear aircraft models. This receding horizon approach then informs a model predictive control-based control allocator function which can be used as an add-on scheme to a nominal controller. Numerical simulations are used to show that the proposed load alleviation system can successfully avoid the violation of load bounds in the presence of both gust disturbances and maneuvers and with minimal effect on the trajectory tracking performance.

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Livestream / Virtual Mon, 07 Dec 2020 16:34:21 -0500 2020-12-08T14:30:00-05:00 2020-12-08T15:30:00-05:00 Aerospace Engineering Livestream / Virtual PhD candidate John Hansen
Graph Theoretic Algorithms Adaptable to Quantum Computing (December 17, 2020 10:00am) https://events.umich.edu/event/79629 79629-20432433@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Thursday, December 17, 2020 10:00am
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Aerospace Engineering

This thesis is the first effort towards solving scientific computing problems using graph-based algorithms amenable to quantum computers and specifically, quantum annealers.

Many engineering problems, when considered in a discrete computational setting, can be reduced to a graph coloring problem. Examples range from systems design, image segmentation to pattern recognition where energy cost functions with discrete variables are extremized.

However, graph techniques remain under-utilized in scientific computing. However, we have recently witnessed great advancements in quantum computing where physical devices are available that can solve discrete optimization problems faster than most well-known classical algorithms.

This warrants further investigation into re-formulation of scientific computation problems as graph theoretic problems, and thus enable rapid engineering simulations in a soon-to-be quantum computing world. The computational techniques developed in this thesis allow representation of surface scalars like perimeter and area using discrete variables in a graph. With this framework, several quantities important to engineering applications can be represented in graph based algorithms.

These include: surface energy of cracks for fracture prediction, grain boundary energy to model microstructure evolution, estimate surface areas (of grains, fibers) to generate conformal meshes of microstructures, etc. Combinatorial optimization problems for these applications are first presented.

The last two chapters of the thesis describes two new graph coloring algorithms implemented on a physical quantum computing device: the D-wave quantum annealer. The first algorithm describes a functional minimization approach to solve differential equations. The second algorithm describes a realization of Boltzmann machine learning algorithm on a quantum annealer, with open source codes available on GitHub. The latter allows generative and discriminative learning of data which has vast applications in many fields.

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Livestream / Virtual Mon, 30 Nov 2020 21:10:48 -0500 2020-12-17T10:00:00-05:00 2020-12-17T11:00:00-05:00 Off Campus Location Aerospace Engineering Livestream / Virtual Representative figure
Multidisciplinary Study of Soft Shape Morphing Systems (December 18, 2020 10:00am) https://events.umich.edu/event/80090 80090-20556868@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, December 18, 2020 10:00am
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Aerospace Engineering

Nature abounds with examples of shape morphing systems where an entity either gradually grows into a complex 3-D shape pattern or rapidly morphs into a new configuration. Inspired by the shape shifting capabilities of biological systems, we study the response of natural and synthetic morphing systems through a few examples. These include the in vitro adaptive contraction of a cardiac muscle cell inside a constraining hydrogel, inflation of architectured rubber membranes, and a shape morphing soft robot.

Cardiac muscle cells (cardiomyocytes) have an intrinsic mechano-chemo-transduction (MCT) mechanism that enable them to automatically convert mechanical loads into biochemical signals to actively regulate their amplitude and speed of contraction. At the molecular level, this is attributed to the morphing of regulatory and motor proteins (actin and myosin filaments) to facilitate muscle contraction. The underlying MCT mechanisms, however, are unclear and currently under investigation. To help decipher these mechanisms, we develop a mathematical model, as a companion tool for the experimental in vitro Cell-in-Gel system of our collaborators, to analyze the time-dependent, 3-D strains and stresses within a cardiomyocyte contracting in a viscoelastic medium. The model utilizes the exact analytical solution of the viscoelastic Eshelby inclusion boundary value problem as an efficient computational tool to simulate the mechanical fields inside and outside the cardiomyocyte.

In a second study, we investigate the inflation of shape morphing synthetic soft composites with architectured geometry and material properties. Such shape morphing systems could have desirable applications in space deployable systems where there is a growing demand for energy-efficient lightweight and low-cost structures. These structures possess an exceptionally high mechanical packaging efficiency and very small stowage volume, which makes them attractive candidates for space applications including antenna reflectors, solar arrays, inflatable rovers, re-entry equipment, and human habitats. In particular, we explore several feasible 3-D shapes that can be achieved through the inflation of an initially flat rubber membrane with nonuniform geometrical and material properties. Our rubber-based prototypes provide a convenient basis for conceptual scientific and design explorations in shape morphing inflatable structures.

In a third study, we explore the idea of shape shifting in the design and fabrication of synthetic soft robots with active components. Motivated by the swimming mechanisms of jellyfish, we develop a novel concept for a soft biomimetic underwater robot that imitates the shape and kinematics of the typical animal. The robot swims by harnessing the buckling instability of its soft body to quickly morph from an initially flat into a deformed dome-shaped configuration, which generates the required thrust for underwater locomotion. Joule heating of an embedded pre-stretched shape memory alloy spring serves as an artificial muscle for the robot to make this shape morphing possible. The proposed synthetic shape morphing system introduces a new idea in design of simple, compact, and biomimetic robots with smart artificial muscles.

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Livestream / Virtual Wed, 16 Dec 2020 14:38:05 -0500 2020-12-18T10:00:00-05:00 2020-12-18T11:00:00-05:00 Off Campus Location Aerospace Engineering Livestream / Virtual Headshot of Mohammad Kazemi
2021 Virtual MLK Day Event | Overcoming Turbulence: Trials and Triumphs of Black Women in Aerospace (January 19, 2021 12:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/80062 80062-20550961@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Tuesday, January 19, 2021 12:00pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Aerospace Engineering

You're invited to join us for a candid and inspiring panel discussion in recognition of Martin Luther King Jr. Michigan Aerospace will host a panel of Black alumnae to discuss their unique career journeys, the impact of being "the only one," and how to overcome roadblocks. The panel discussion will be moderated by Black Students in Aerospace members, Erin Levesque and Erika Jones.

This event is free and open to the public via Zoom.
https://umich.zoom.us/j/92087353589

Meet the panelists:

Aisha Bowe, BSAE ’08
STEMBoard

Sydney Hamilton, BSAE '13
Boeing

Dr. Jessica Jones, MSAE ’13, PhD AE '17
Aurora Flight Sciences

Jasmine LeFlore, BSAE ’15
Collins Aerospace

Jasmine Sadler, BSAE ’09
The STEAM Collaborative

Lizalyn Smith, BSME ’02
Self-Published Author

Tia Sutton, BSAE ’00
Truck and Engine Manufacturers Association

Belinda Worley, BSAE '96
Amazon

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Livestream / Virtual Fri, 15 Jan 2021 11:46:58 -0500 2021-01-19T12:00:00-05:00 2021-01-19T13:30:00-05:00 Off Campus Location Aerospace Engineering Livestream / Virtual Aerospace Engineering MLK Day Event Flyer