Aerospace Systems Design Laboratory (ASDL) PhD student Eleni Sotiropoulos-Georgiopoulos has been selected as the winner of the Vertical Flight Society’s (VFS) prestigious Alfred Gessow Award for the best overall technical paper presented at the 80th Annual Forum and Technology Display. The winning paper is from the Safety Session and is entitled, “Scenario-Based Helicopter Flight Simulation of Accident-Prone Vortex Ring State (VRS) Encounters”. Dr. Alexia Payan and Dr. Dimitri Mavris of ASDL and Charles Johnson of the Federal Aviation Administration are co-authors on the paper.

Sotiropoulos-Georgiopoulos graduated with a Master of Science in Aerospace Engineering from ISAE-SUPAERO and Georgia Tech in 2022. Her PhD is focused on the use of flight simulators for vortex ring state accident prevention. Her research is conducted at the FAA William J. Hughes Technical Center’s Cockpit Simulation Facility/Vertical Flight Aviation Simulation Technologies Laboratory, experimenting with their six helicopter and electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) flight simulators.

The work presented in her paper was performed in partnership with Loft Dynamics, Georgia Tech, the Vuichard Recovery Aviation Safety Foundation and Sophrodyne Aerospace, and incorporated input from Airbus Helicopters, Robinson Helicopter, ONERA—The French Aerospace Laboratory, and the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA). Sotiropoulos-Georgiopoulos will present the winning Alfred Gessow paper at the 50th Annual European Rotorcraft Forum (ERF), taking place Sept. 10–12, 2024, in Marseille, France.

Founded in 1943 as the American Helicopter Society, the Vertical Flight Society today is the international professional organization that advocates, promotes, and supports vertical flight technology.