RESEARCH
EXCELLENCE
By the Numbers
The faculty of Mechanical and
Aerospace Engineering (MAE)
at the University of Virginia
have an outstanding record of
research and scholarship as
evidenced by national
distinction and quantitative
metrics per tenured and
tenured-track (T3) faculty:
Research Expenditures
(External Funding 7/14-6/15)
= $535,000 per T3 Faculty
Photo courtesy of NASA
Hall of Fame
Astronaut and
Associate AE Chair
Kathryn Thornton
U.Va. Alumna
and Professor
Thornton is a
veteran of four
Space Shuttle
missions,
including the
repair of the Hubble space
telescope on STS-61 in 1993,
and she conducted several
other spacewalk operations.
She currently serves on the
boards of the Space
Foundation and the
Astronaut Scholarship
Foundation.
2014 Journal Publications
= 5.2 per T3 Faculty
2014 Conference Publications
= 3.6 per T3 Faculty
2014 Google Scholar Citations
= 249 per T3 Faculty
Discovering the
Joys of Dragonfly
Dynamics
Graduate
student
Ayodeji T.
Bode-Oke
was named
the winner of
the 2015 AIAA Abe M.
Zerem Award for
Distinguished Achievement
in Aeronautics. As a
Innovative
graduate member of Dr.
Extreme Wind
Haibo Dong’s Flow
Inspired by a
Simulation Research Group,
palm tree’s
Bode-Oke is taking the
ability to bend inspiration from flying
in strong winds, dragonflies to discover the
a Morphing
design principles of
Rotor
is
being
Carlos Noyes
micro-drones. The joys of
designed at
exploring aerospace science
U.Va. with graduate student
in the insect world have led
Carlos Noyes and funding
him to pursue a doctoral
from NREL. For this new
degree with his dragonflies
concept, Prof. Eric Loth was
and made him the recipient
cited in 2015 by Popular
of the Louis T. Rader Award
Science as one of the twelve and the Sigma Gamma Tau
“Brilliant Minds Behind the
Outstanding Graduating
New Energy Revolution.”
Student award.
Spacecraft Design
Students to
Fly Experiment in
Stratosphere
Spacecraft design students
are working to design,
build and fly a radiation
spectrometer experiment
onboard a NASA high-altitude
balloon. The goal of the
mission is to measure cosmic
rays in the stratosphere. This
will help
validate
predictive
models of
radiation
exposure
associated
with space
flight. The
team is the
first worldwide to combine a
spectrometer with a smart
phone to measure and
record radiation levels. The
students collaborate with
scientists and engineers at
NASA Wallops Flight Facility
and NASA Langley.
Google Scholar H-Index
= 21.7 average for T3 Faculty
In addition, 30% of the MAE
faculty are Fellows in their
professional societies (AIAA,
ASEE, ASME, IoP, and SAE).
This high level of scholarship
is made possible by an
incredibly strong group of
Masters and PhD students.
This is evidenced by their high
GRE Quantitative Scores of
164.5 for MAE. Such scores
are comparable to those of
the top ten engineering
programs as reported in U.S.
News & World Report's “2016
Best Engineering Schools,”
where the average scores
ranged from 166 (e.g., MIT
and Stanford) to 164 (e.g.
Georgia Tech and Purdue).