Eight students from around the nation are making Iowa State University and the Department of Aerospace Engineering (AerE) their summer home for the ten-week program.

The Department of Aerospace Engineering’s LAUNCH-UAS undergraduate research program has initiated its takeoff for 2022.

Eight students from around the nation are making Iowa State University and the Department of Aerospace Engineering (AerE) their summer home for the ten-week program.

Organized by AerE associate professors Benjamin Ahn and Thomas Ward, the Launching Aerospace’s Underrepresented Students into the Next Chapter-Unpiloted Aerial Systems (LAUNCH-UAS) program promotes greater participation of underrepresented minority students in aerospace engineering research.

It provides students with cutting-edge research experience in UAS; exposes students to aerospace research projects and engineers; and develops students’ research and professional skills and opportunities to prepare them for graduate programs and beyond.

For 2022 five projects were made available for the program, all dealing with various aspects of functions of UAS, including transportation infrastructure inspections (faculty mentor Halil Ceylan, Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering); aerodynamic shape optimization for wings (faculty mentor Ping He, AerE); development of the virtual test-bed for UAS using hardware-in-the-loop simulation (faculty mentor Dae-Young Lee, AerE); design and test of a high altitude hold system for latex balloons (faculty mentor Matthew Nelson, AerE); and understanding the correlation between a 1D combustion model and experiment (faculty mentor Thomas Ward, AerE).

Students conduct independent research projects with assistance from faculty mentors and participate in events, workshops and seminars; present a poster summarizing their research at a university-wide symposium and more.

The 2022 participants include:

Nicholas Carinci, Le Moyne College
Matthew Caulfield, James Madison University
Nicolas DiStefano, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University
Helen Hu, Johns Hopkins University
Priscilla Pak, Boston University
Fernando Ramos, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York
Bruno Rangel, Iowa State University
Anmol Sharma, California Polytechnic University

See photos of all the participants and learn more about the LAUNCH-UAS program.