The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) has announced that GT aerospace engineering professor Dr. Dewey H. Hodges has been chosen to receive the 2015 Spirit of St. Louis Medal.

A longtime Fellow of ASME, AIAA, AHS and AAM, Hodges will formally receive the medal and a $1,000 honorarium during ceremonies to be held at the group's Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition, to be held in Texas this November.

The Spirit of St. Louis Medal was established in 1929 by Philip D. Ball, ASME members and citizens of St. Louis. It is awarded for meritorious service in the advancement of aeronautics and astronautics.

In announcing Hodges as its 2015 medal recipient, ASME praised him for "developing the the theory and methodology for modeling the dynamics and aeroelasticity of composite helicopter rotor blades, highly flexible slender aircraft wings and wind turbine blades; and its implementation in the VABS software used extensively in research and industry."

Hodges joined Georgia Tech's aerospace engineering faculty in 1986, following a 16-year stint as a research scientist at the U.S. Army Aeroflightdynamics Directorate at Ames. He was also a guest lecturer at his alma mater, Stanford University, during that time.

As the 2015 Spirit of St. Louis Medal recipient, Hodges is in rarified company. Past winners include Daniel Guggenheim, Charles Draper, Neil Armstrong, and Robert Loewy, among others.

Last year, Hodges was selected to give the much-coveted Nikolsky Lecture by the American Helicopter Society. Find out more about Dr. Dewey Hodges.