Thake and Szpak Present at AIAA Conference

Undergraduate aerospace students, Mike Thake and Ben Szpak, presented research from their senior honors thesis projects at the AIAA Region III Student Conference April 4th and 5th at the University of Illinois.  Both students began their research projects as undergraduate research assistants last summer, and continued the projects in spite of a busy senior year.  Both students did an outstanding job.

Mike Thake was honored as having the conference's best combined paper and presentation of, "Effect of Mistuning on Cascade Bending-Torsion Flutter using a Compressible Time-Domain Aerodynamic Theory."  This top honor for the conference has earned Thake a trip to present his work at the AIAA Aerospace Sciences Meeting in January 2010 as well as a NASA internship this summer.

Both of these young men have done an outstanding job of representing our department, college, university, and student chapter of AIAA.