Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering (AE) Regents Professor Vigor Yang has been selected to receive the 2025 American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Reed Aeronautics Award. The award recognizes Yang’s significant contributions to the understanding of combustion physics in aerospace systems, technological innovation in aerospace propulsion, and advancement of aerospace engineering education and literature.

Yang will be presented with the award in Washington, D.C., on April 30, 2025, at the AIAA Awards Gala.

“Receiving this award is a profound honor that reflects not just personal achievement but the collective efforts of an incredible community. I am grateful and also humbled by this recognition, which would not have been possible without the enormous support from my mentors, colleagues, and students over the years. They have been a continuous source of energy and inspiration,” said Yang. “In aerospace engineering, the sky is not the limit, and I am privileged to collaborate with and learn from people worldwide to extend our field's frontier.”

The award, named after Dr. Sylvanus A. Reed, aeronautical engineer, designer, and founding member of the Institute of Aeronautical Sciences in 1932, is the highest honor AIAA bestows for notable achievements in aeronautics. 

Yang’s illustrious career spans over forty years. He has expertise in a variety of topics, including combustion dynamics in propulsion and power-generation systems; multi-fidelity modeling and simulations of fluid flows and combustion; combustion of energetic materials; high-pressure transport phenomena, thermodynamics, and combustion; nano technologies for propulsion and energetic applications; and data science and technology. 

He served as the William R.T. Oakes Professor and Chair of AE from 2009 through 2018, and he has been the principal or co-principal investigator on over 70 research projects, including nine of the Department of Defense’s Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) projects.
Notably, he has published 12 comprehensive volumes and numerous technical papers on combustion, propulsion, energetics, and data science and technology. 

Currently, he is the editor of the Aerospace Book Series of Cambridge University Press, Deputy Editor of the AIAA Journal, and founding editor of the Machine Learning in Science, Technology, Technology, and Mathematics (ML-in-STEM) Book Series of de Gruyter Academic Publishing GmbH.
In 2014, AE Regents Professor Emeritus Professor Ben T. Zinn was selected for the Reed Aeronautics Award.

In 2014, AE Regents Professor Emeritus Professor Ben T. Zinn was selected for the Reed Aeronautics Award.