School of Engineering
Showing 11-20 of 36 Results
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Simone D'Amico
Associate Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics
BioSimone D’Amico is Associate Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AA), W.M. Keck Faculty Scholar in the School of Engineering, Associate Professor of Geophysics (by Courtesy), Science Fellow at the Hoover Institution and Chief Science Officer at EraDrive Inc. He is the Founding Director of the Stanford Space Rendezvous Laboratory, Founding Co-Director of the Center for AEroSpace Autonomy Research (CAESAR), and Director of the Undergraduate Program in Aerospace Engineering at Stanford. He has 23+ years of experience in research and development of autonomous spacecraft and distributed space systems. He developed and deployed the distributed Guidance, Navigation, and Control (GNC) system of several formation-flying, rendezvous and proximity operations missions such as GRACE (NASA/DLR), PRISMA (OHB/DLR/CNES/DTU), TanDEM-X (DLR), BIROS (DLR) and PROBA-3 (ESA). Currently, he is the institutional PI of four autonomous satellite swarms funded by NASA (STARLING, STARI) and by NSF (VISORS, SWARM-EX). Dr. D'Amico is Fellow of AAS, Associate Fellow of AIAA, Associate Editor of the AIAA's JGCD and he is in the Advisory Board of four space start-ups focusing on distributed space systems for future applications in SAR remote sensing, orbital lifetime prolongation, and space-based solar power. He was the recipient of several awards, most recently the 2024 NASA Ames Honor Award for the Starling mission, Best Paper Awards at IAF (2022), IEEE (2021), AIAA (2021), AAS (2019) conferences, the M. Barry Carlton Award by IEEE (2020), the Leonardo 500 Award by the Leonardo da Vinci Society/ISSNAF (2019), FAI/NAA’s Group Diploma of Honor (2018), DLR’s Sabbatical/Forschungssemester (2012) and Wissenschaft Preis (2006), and NASA’s Group Achievement Award for the GRACE mission (2004). He received the B.S. and M.S. degrees from Politecnico di Milano (2003) and the Ph.D. degree from Delft University of Technology (2010).
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Sigrid Elschot
Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics
BioSigrid Elschot is a Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics and founding director of the Space Environment and Satellite Systems laboratory. Her research focuses on understanding and mitigating the space environment to enable more resilient spacecraft for interplanetary and interstellar exploration. Her work includes space weather detection and modeling, which is central to Space Situational Awareness (SSA) and Space Domain Awareness (SDA), achieved by integrating in situ and remote sensing data with high fidelity simulations to characterize space hazards. Current efforts include experimental and computational studies of hypervelocity dust and debris impacts on spacecraft using dust accelerators, light-gas guns, and Particle-In-Cell simulations, and ground-based radar to remotely characterize space debris and meteoroid populations. Prof. Elschot also leads research programs in hypersonic plasma physics relevant to atmospheric re-entry vehicles, and space energy harvesting for spacecraft power and propulsion. Prof. Elschot has been the recipient of several awards, including the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), NSF CAREER award, DoE CAREER award, Outstanding Mentor Award and Outstanding Professor in Aeronautics and Astronautics.
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Anton Ermakov
Assistant Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics and, by courtesy, of Geophysics and of Earth and Planetary Sciences
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsI am interested in the formation and evolution of the Solar System bodies and the ways we can constrain planetary interiors by geophysical measurements.
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Charbel Farhat
Vivian Church Hoff Professor of Aircraft Structures and Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsCharbel Farhat and his Research Group (FRG) develop mathematical models, advanced computational algorithms, and high-performance software for the design, analysis, and digital twinning of complex systems in aerospace, marine, mechanical, and naval engineering. They contribute major advances to Simulation-Based Engineering Science. Current engineering foci in research are on reliable autonomous carrier landing in rough seas; dissipation of vertical landing energies through structural flexibility; nonlinear aeroelasticity of N+3 aircraft with High Aspect Ratio (HAR) wings; pulsation and flutter of a parachute; pendulum motion in main parachute clusters; coupled fluid-structure interaction (FSI) in supersonic inflatable aerodynamic decelerators for Mars landing; flight dynamics of hypersonic systems and their trajectories; and advanced digital twinning. Current theoretical and computational emphases in research are on high-performance, multi-scale modeling for the high-fidelity analysis of multi-component, multi-physics problems; discrete-event-free embedded boundary methods for CFD and FSI; efficient Bayesian optimization using physics-based surrogate models; modeling and quantifying model-form uncertainty; probabilistic, physics-based machine learning; mechanics-informed artificial neural networks for data-driven constitutive modeling; and efficient nonlinear projection-based model order reduction for time-critical applications such as design, active control, and digital twinning.
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Grace Gao
Associate Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics and, by courtesy, of Electrical Engineering
BioGrace Gao is an associate professor in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Stanford University, with a courtesy appointment in the Electrical Engineering Department. She leads the Navigation and Autonomous Vehicles Laboratory (NAV Lab) and serves as co-director of the Stanford AI Safety Center and co-lead of the Stanford SystemX Robotics area. Her research focuses on robust and secure perception, localization, and navigation, with applications in crewed and uncrewed aerial vehicles, autonomous cars, humanoid robots, and space robotics.
Prof. Gao has won numerous awards, including the NSF CAREER Award, the Institute of Navigation Early Achievement Award, the RTCA William E. Jackson Award, and the Inspiring Early Academic Career Award from Stanford University. In addition to her research achievements, she has received significant recognition for her teaching and advising, including the AIAA Stanford Chapter Excellence in Advising Award and the Excellence in Teaching Award. -
Kentaro Hara
Assistant Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics
BioKen Hara is an Assistant Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Stanford University. He received a Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering and a Graduate Certificate in Plasma Science and Engineering from the University of Michigan, and B.S. and M.S. in Aeronautics and Astronautics from the University of Tokyo. He was a Visiting Research Physicist at Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory as a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Postdoctoral Fellow. Professor Hara’s research interests include electric propulsion, low temperature partially ionized plasmas, plasma physics (plasma-wall interactions, plasma-wave interactions, kinetic and fluid instabilities), data assimilation, rarefied gas flows, and computational fluid and plasma dynamics. He is a recipient of the Air Force Young Investigator Program Award, the Department of Energy Early Career Award, and the Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Program Award.
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Antony Jameson
Professor (Research) of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Emeritus
BioProfessor Jameson's research focuses on the numerical solution of partial differential equations with applications to subsonic, transonic, and supersonic flow past complex configurations, as well as aerodynamic shape optimization.
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Mykel Kochenderfer
Associate Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI and Associate Professor, by courtesy, of Computer Science
BioMykel Kochenderfer is Associate Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Stanford University. Prior to joining the faculty, he was at MIT Lincoln Laboratory where he worked on airspace modeling and aircraft collision avoidance, with his early work leading to the establishment of the ACAS X program. He received a Ph.D. from the University of Edinburgh and B.S. and M.S. degrees in computer science from Stanford University. Prof. Kochenderfer is the director of the Stanford Intelligent Systems Laboratory (SISL), conducting research on advanced algorithms and analytical methods for the design of robust decision making systems. Of particular interest are systems for air traffic control, unmanned aircraft, and other aerospace applications where decisions must be made in uncertain, dynamic environments while maintaining safety and efficiency. Research at SISL focuses on efficient computational methods for deriving optimal decision strategies from high-dimensional, probabilistic problem representations. He is an author of "Decision Making under Uncertainty: Theory and Application" (2015), "Algorithms for Optimization" (2019), and "Algorithms for Decision Making" (2022), all from MIT Press. He is a third generation pilot.
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Ilan Kroo
Thomas V. Jones Professor in the School of Engineering
BioProfessor Kroo's research involves work in three general areas: multidisciplinary optimization and aircraft synthesis, unconventional aircraft, and low-speed aerodynamics. Current research in the field of aircraft synthesis, sponsored by NASA and industry, includes the development of a new computational architecture for aircraft design, and its integration with numerical optimization. Studies of unconventional configurations employ rapid turnaround analysis methods in the design of efficient subsonic and supersonic commercial aircraft. Recent research has included investigation of configurations such as joined wings, oblique wings, and tailless aircraft. Nonlinear low-speed aerodynamics studies have focused on vortex wake roll-up, refined computation of induced drag, the design of wing tips, and the aerodynamics of maneuvering aircraft.
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Nicolas Lee
Senior Lecturer of Aeronautics and Astronautics
BioNicolas Lee is currently a Senior Lecturer in Aeronautics and Astronautics at Stanford University and specializes in teaching hands-on design skills. Previously, Nicolas was a research engineer studying hypervelocity impact plasma, meteor radar observations, and mission concepts using deployable structures and CubeSat technologies. Nicolas was a Ph.D. student at Stanford focused on meteoroid impact effects on spacecraft, and a W. M. Keck Institute for Space Studies postdoctoral scholar in aerospace at Caltech researching technologies for robotically assembled space telecopes, membrane structures for space solar power applications, and small satellite high voltage electronics.