“Celebrating International Cooperation in Vertical Flight Technology” was the theme of the 2014 conference, which will also included 23 papers and technical presentations by faculty from AE’s Vertical Lift Research Center of Excellence (VLRCOE).

The week kicked off with the Second Annual Micro Air Vehicle (MAV) Student Challenge, a competition that will pit a design team from Georgia Tech's VLRCOE against teams from Penn State, the University of Maryland, and North Dakota University. Check out the competition.

Leading the AE contingent at the formal meeting was Dr. Marilyn Smith, the AHS Forum 70 technical chair, and one of the recipients of the AgustaWestland International Helicopter Fellowship, an award that annually recognizes “significant contributions to international vertical flight cooperation.”

This year, the Fellowship will honor a team, the US/France Project Agreement on Helicopter Aeromechanics and Human Factors Integration Research, that is widely heralded for coordinating a productive scientific collaboration between rotorcraft researchers in the U.S. and France.

Dr. Dewey Hodges was selected to give the much-anticipated  2014 Alexander Nikolsky Lecture, entitled “Unified Approach for Accurate and Efficient Modeling of Composite Rotor Blade Dynamics.”Read more about this lecture.

Dr. J. V. R. Prasad was officially recognized with an AHS Technical Fellow Award, an honor given each year for career-based accomplishments that have benefited the vertical flight community. AE alumnus Dr. Rama JankiRam, the senior manager for flight technology at the Boeing Company, was also tapped to receive this honor.

Georgia Tech Regents Professor Dr. Lakshmi Sankar took to the podium to receive the Howard Hughes Award for his collaborative research with the NRTC/VLC High-fidelity Icing Analysis and Validation Team. That group made significant contributions to the understanding of rotorcraft icing and to the validation of an icing analysis tool suite.

Four AE students were recognized for earning more than $9,000 in Vertical Flight Foundation Scholarships, to be used during the next academic year: Frank Patterson (PhD), Joachim Hodara (PhD), Sorin Pirau (MS), Brandon Liberi (undergraduate).

Click on the photo below to see more photos from the event.