On 30 April-2 May, the Aerospace Systems Design Laboratory (ASDL) held its annual External Advisory Board (EAB) meeting and review. The program for this event included overviews for ASDL’s seven divisions and its new Experimental Testing Group, presentations of Grand Challenge projects from ASDL students, and demonstrations sessions of capabilities and dashboards created through division research activities or Grand Challenge projects.

“The ASDL Grand Challenge program is a core component of the ASDL academic program and serves as an important means of teaching and training first year Masters students,” explained ASDL Director Professor Dimitri Mavris. In the Grand Challenges, incoming graduate students are divided into teams and each team is given a broad, open-ended problem to address during a two-semester project. Students are involved in both a vehicle and a system of systems (SoS) project. The event featured 50 Grand Challenges—25 vehicle focused and 25 SoS focused. “We are grateful to our sponsors for supporting these projects and giving the student teams real-world and challenging projects on topics ranging from sustainable aviation and safety and accessibility to space mission planning and defense strategy and operations,” continued Mavris.

The event included a poster session/reception where students presented the project poster to the project sponsors and other attendees. There was also a feedback session during which the attendees provided constructive comments to the students about their work as well as advice on how use the critical system thinking skills they learned through the course of the projects.

During the feedback session, Mavris presented the Daniel P. Schrage Award for Excellence to the best Grand Challenge Teams in both categories. The teams are evaluated on various criteria including progress towards project’s technical objectives, cohesion of the team, and how prepared the team was for project reviews.

This year the award was presented to the following teams.
 

SoS Grand Challenge Award

For best SoS Grand Challenge, there was a tie between the following teams.

Assessment and Validation of Inclusivity-Accessibility in Air Travel (AVIATE)

Versatile Autonomous Lifesaver in a Combat Rescue Environment (VALCRE)

 

Vehicle Grand Challenge Award

For the best Vehicle Grand Challenge, there was also a tie between the two teams.

GT Race Car Modeling for Improving Lap Time Performance (GRIP)

Tracking Resources for Aerospace Commodities Ensuring Dependable Acquisition (TRACED)

 

In addition, Mavris presented awards to two best senior student presentations during the division overviews.

	Jayaprakash D. Kambhampaty, Digital Engineering Division, Boosting the AeroBERT-classifier Language Model
	Hayden Dean, Space Systems & Technologies Division, A Reduced Order Modeling Approach to the Dynamic Stability Analysis of Blunt-Body Entry Vehicles