Ph.D. student Sydrak Abdi (advised by Professor Derek Paley (AE/ISR)) receives Amazon Lab126 Fellowship. Abdi works in Paley’s Collective Dynamics and Control Laboratory, and his research interests are in motion control and robotic swarms.

Three Alumni Among Aviation Week Network’s 2021 20 Twenties

Alumnus Wins Alfred Gessow Award at VFS Forum 77

Alumnus Brent Sherwood (M.S. '88) received the 2020 Columbia Medal of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) during the 2021 ASCE annual meeting, postponed due to the pandemic.

Contributions to the Department of Aerospace Engineering at Maryland help create more educational and research opportunities for our students, faculty, and department. Your contribution, no matter how large or small, can have an impact on a student today, and create far reaching impacts for tomorrow.

Through a generous start-up gift from alumnus Kerry Wisnosky ('86) and his wife Robin, one such avenue for opportunities was the creation of the Kerry and Robin Wisnosky Fund for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Initiatives in Aerospace Engineering.

Synergy flourishes when a team is diverse, Wisnosky believes, and diverse team members bring a variety of perspectives to the table, which can create a healthy “creative disruption” that fosters innovation and counters a well-known problem in many organizations: the tendency to get stuck in old habits.  

"The aerospace engineering field is changing, and we want to encourage that change,” Wisnosky said. “Let’s diversify, let’s be inclusive, let’s enable people from many different backgrounds to help us grow our aerospace program.”