Professor, alumnus receive Vertical Flight Society’s outstanding technical paper award
Aug 21, 2024
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — A paper co-authored by Sven Schmitz, the Boeing/A.D. Welliver Professor of Aerospace Engineering at Penn State, and Penn State aerospace alumnus Jason Cornelius of the NASA Ames Research Center, received the Vertical Flight Society (VFS) San Francisco Bay Area Chapter’s Velkoff Award for Outstanding Technical Paper. The award is “given to an individual(s) for the best technical paper, written or published within the last 12 months, documenting a significant contribution to the field of vertical flight,” according to the website.
The paper, “Dragonfly Rotor Optimization using Machine Learning Applied to an OVERFLOW Generated Airfoil Database,” focuses on rotor design aspects of the lander for Dragonfly — NASA’s fourth mission under its New Frontiers program, which aims to “answer unique science questions in the exploration of the solar system.” Dragonfly will investigate surface and atmospheric conditions of Titan, Saturn’s largest moon. It is scheduled to launch in 2028, according to NASA.
Cornelius accepted the award on behalf of both researchers at the VFS San Francisco Bay Area Chapter’s annual awards banquet on Aug. 15 in Mountain View, California.
“The technical paper is a testimony to the wonderful relationship between the Department of Aerospace Engineering's Vertical Lift Research Center of Excellence and the Rotor Aeromechanics Branch at NASA Ames Research Center,” Schmitz said. “NASA researchers like Jason collaborate with Penn State on research and student mentorship via the NASA Pathways program to enable innovative science and engineering in rotor aeromechanics. The paper brings together both classical aerodynamics and cutting-edge breakthroughs in machine learning to design a rotorcraft to fly on a moon in the outer solar system. We are very much honored having received this prestigious award.”
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