Clark School Press Release Story

Two Big Wins for Clark School Teams

Aerospace Engineering Students Win Helicopter, NASA Design Competitions

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE  July 20, 2010

CONTACT:
Melissa Corley
301 405 6501
mcorley@umd.edu

COLLEGE PARK, Md.-Students from the Clark School's Department of Aerospace Engineering have captured top honors in two different competitions:

1. FIRST PLACE: 27th Annual American Helicopter Society (AHS) Student Design Competition (Graduate Category)

The AHS competition challenges students to design a vertical lift aircraft that meets specified requirements, and promotes student interest in vertical flight technology. The first- and second-place teams are awarded a cash stipend and two members of the winning team are invited to the AHS Annual Forum and Technology Display to present the details of their proposal.

The winning team from the Clark School's Alfred Gessow Rotorcraft Center, included student team members Rajan Sharma, David Mayo, Ben Berry, Graham Bowen-Davies, Vincent Prosbic, Ananth Sridharan and David Pfeifer, and faculty advisors Inderjit Chopra and J. Gordon Leishman and VT Nagaraj. Second place went to Georgia Tech.

The hover flight test results for the team's technology demonstration entry can be found online.

2. FIRST PLACE: NASA's 2010 Exploration Systems Mission Directorate MOONTASKS Competition

The NASA competition encourages students to design tools and instruments needed for future human and robotic exploration of the moon. Student projects tackle real problems required for successful lunar missions such as navigation in the darkness around the Moon's south pole, sample retrieval and on-site analysis, and astronaut recovery and transport back to outpost.

This year's winning team is comprised of students from the Clark School's Space System Laboratory and Arizona State University. The team won first place for the design, fabrication and testing of the RAVEN astronaut assistance rover. The award consists of summer internships, to be filled by Kevin Buckley from UM and Lauren Puglisi from ASU, who are working with the teams developing systems for the NASA Desert RATS testing in September. Faculty advisors were Dave Akin and Mary Bowden.

"We can all be proud of our student teams and their tireless faculty advisors in the Baja, AUVSI, AHS and NASA competitions," said Dean Darryll Pines. "We've shown once again that, in tough competition against other excellent schools, our Clark School students and faculty are second to none."

About the A. James Clark School of Engineering

The Clark School of Engineering, situated on the rolling, 1,500-acre University of Maryland campus in College Park, Md., is one of the premier engineering schools in the U.S., with graduate and undergraduate education programs ranked in or near the Top 20. In 2012, the Clark School was ranked 14th in the world by the Institute of Higher Education and Center for World-Class Universities in its Academic Ranking of World Universities. Three faculty members affiliated with the Clark School were inducted into the National Academy of Engineering in 2010.

The school, which offers 13 graduate programs and 12 undergraduate programs, including degree and certification programs tailored for working professionals, is home to one of the most vibrant research programs in the country. The Clark School garnered research awards of $171 million last year. With emphasis in key areas such as energy, nanotechnology and materials, bioengineering, robotics, communications and networking, life cycle and reliability engineering, project management, intelligent transportation systems and aerospace, the Clark School is leading the way toward the next generations of engineering advances.