Recipients of Vertical Flight Society’s 2021 Awards programme announced, to be recognised in virtual ceremony later this year

The Ver­ti­cal Flight Soci­ety has announced the 2021 recip­i­ents of its pres­ti­gious awards pro­gramme, with this year’s win­ners being recog­nised vir­tu­al­ly at the upcom­ing VFS Awards Cer­e­mo­ny on May 5th.

Since the estab­lish­ment of the first awards pro­gramme in 1944, they have paid trib­ute to the out­stand­ing lead­ers of VTOL air­craft and tech­nol­o­gy, serv­ing as a cat­a­lyst for stim­u­lat­ing tech­no­log­i­cal advances.

Mike Hirschberg, the Ver­ti­cal Flight Soci­ety’s Exec­u­tive Direc­tor, said: “For more than 75 years, the Ver­ti­cal Flight Soci­ety has rec­og­nized the lead­ing con­trib­u­tors to advanc­ing ver­ti­cal flight.

“This year’s win­ners high­light impres­sive con­tri­bu­tions made by VFS mem­bers in advanc­ing the state of the art of VTOL air­craft, from decades of improve­ments to heli­copters to the lat­est break­throughs in advanced rotor­craft, unmanned VTOL air­craft and elec­tric VTOL tech­nol­o­gy.”

William (Bill) Welsh, Senior Tech­ni­cal Fel­low, Dynam­ics at Siko­rsky, a Lock­heed Mar­tin Com­pa­ny, is this year’s recip­i­ent of the Dr. Alexan­der Klemin Award. This is the high­est hon­our the Ver­ti­cal Flight Soci­ety bestows on an indi­vid­ual for notable achieve­ment in advanc­ing the field of ver­ti­cal flight aero­nau­tics.

Welsh was rec­og­nized for more than 40 years of con­tri­bu­tions in the field of rotor­craft dynam­ics, includ­ing his lead­er­ship in advanc­ing the state of the art in the active con­trol of noise and vibra­tion in heli­copters. His 35 patents attest to his unique com­bi­na­tion of the­o­ret­i­cal exper­tise, under­stand­ing of com­plex machin­ery, and inge­nu­ity to solve prob­lems and bring new prod­ucts to fruition.

The title of Hon­orary Fel­low is grant­ed to high­ly dis­tin­guished Soci­ety mem­bers who have made excep­tion­al lead­er­ship, inno­v­a­tive or oth­er mer­i­to­ri­ous con­tri­bu­tions that have sig­nif­i­cant­ly advanced VFS and the ver­ti­cal flight com­mu­ni­ty dur­ing their career. The 2021 Hon­orary Fel­lows are:

• Daniel (Dan) New­man, Chief Engi­neer, Advanced Ver­ti­cal Lift, Phan­tom Works Divi­sion, The Boe­ing Com­pa­ny: Newman’s 38-year career in indus­try, aca­d­e­m­ic and gov­ern­ment has had major impacts on the devel­op­ment of advanced rotor­craft and oth­er VTOL sys­tems, while his lead­er­ship with­in VFS con­tin­ues to sup­port the edu­ca­tion and devel­op­ment of future gen­er­a­tions of engi­neers
• Dr. James Wang, Pro­fes­sor, and Direc­tor of eVTOL Research and Inno­va­tion Cen­tre, Nanyang Tech­ni­cal Uni­ver­si­ty, Sin­ga­pore: Wang’s career has includ­ed lead­er­ship posi­tions at Siko­rsky and AgustaWestland/Leonardo, devel­op­ing advanced rotor­craft and oth­er VTOL sys­tems, for which he received eight patents. He has been an ardent sup­port­er and con­trib­u­tor to VFS, includ­ing edu­cat­ing and inspir­ing the next gen­er­a­tion of VTOL engi­neers

The title of Tech­ni­cal Fel­low is grant­ed to Soci­ety mem­bers whose career-based accom­plish­ments towards the goals and objec­tives of the ver­ti­cal flight tech­ni­cal com­mu­ni­ty con­sti­tute an out­stand­ing tech­ni­cal achieve­ment. The 2021 Tech­ni­cal Fel­lows are:

• Dr. Andreas (Andy) P.F. Bern­hard, Direc­tor of Air­craft Design Engi­neer­ing, Siko­rsky, a Lock­heed Mar­tin Com­pa­ny: Bernhard’s 25+ year career in research and devel­op­ment in heli­copter design has made notable advances in active rotor con­trol, active vibra­tion con­trol, mod­el-scale and full-scale wind tun­nel test­ing, health and usage mon­i­tor­ing, and prog­nos­tics,  result­ing in five patents
• Dr. D. Dou­glas (Doug) Boyd, Jr.,Senior Aero­space Engi­neer, NASA Lan­g­ley Research Cen­ter: Boyd is a world-class author­i­ty on aeroa­coustics com­pu­ta­tion­al mod­el­ing for ver­ti­cal lift vehi­cles, and his research is inter­na­tion­al­ly rec­og­nized as some of the most sig­nif­i­cant in this field
• Arnaud Le Pape, Direc­tor of the Heli­copter Pro­gram at the Office Nation­al d’E­tudes et de Recherch­es Aérospa­tiales (ONERA) — The French Aero­space Lab. Le Pape’s 20-year tech­ni­cal career has sig­nif­i­cant­ly advanced the state of the art in rotor­craft aero­me­chan­ics research, fos­tered inter­na­tion­al coop­er­a­tion, and pro­vid­ed exem­plary lead­er­ship in the plan­ning and exe­cu­tion of rotor­craft research
• Dr. Jayant Siro­hi, Pro­fes­sor, Eli H. Ramona Thorn­ton Cen­ten­ni­al Fel­low, Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas at Austin: Sirohi’s pio­neer­ing con­tri­bu­tions over 20 years on the the­o­ry and appli­ca­tion of smart sen­sors and actu­a­tors in ver­ti­cal lift, and exper­i­men­tal research of coax­i­al rotor sys­tems, have great­ly expand­ed and enriched the body of knowl­edge

The John J. Schnei­der His­tor­i­cal Achieve­ment Award is giv­en in recog­ni­tion of dis­tin­guished achieve­ments by an indi­vid­ual in encour­ag­ing appre­ci­a­tion of, and enhanc­ing access to, the his­to­ry and lega­cy of ver­ti­cal flight air­craft. This year’s recip­i­ent is Paul J. Fardink, who has made sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions to doc­u­ment­ing rotor­craft his­to­ry — par­tic­u­lar­ly focused on devel­op­ments by the US Army — through dozens of papers and arti­cles, and by sup­port­ing the recog­ni­tion of three VFS Ver­ti­cal Flight Her­itage Sites. 

The François-Xavier Bag­noud Award is giv­en to an indi­vid­ual Soci­ety mem­ber under the age of 35 for career-to-date out­stand­ing con­tri­bu­tions to ver­ti­cal flight tech­nol­o­gy.

This year’s win­ner is Dr. Michael Jones in the Rotor­craft Depart­ment of the Insti­tute of Flight Sys­tems at the Deutsches Zen­trum für Luft- und Raum­fahrt e.V. (DLR) — The Ger­man Aero­space Cen­ter, for his inno­v­a­tive research in the fields of mod­el­ing and sim­u­la­tion, han­dling qual­i­ties and sim­u­la­tion fideli­ty.

The Society’s Paul E. Haueter Award is giv­en for an out­stand­ing tech­ni­cal con­tri­bu­tion to the field of VTOL air­craft devel­op­ment oth­er than a heli­copter or an oper­a­tional ver­ti­cal flight air­craft. The 2021 Haueter Award is award­ed to John W. Piasec­ki, Pres­i­dent and CEO of Piasec­ki Air­craft Cor­po­ra­tion.

Over his 35-year career, he has led the company’s many inno­v­a­tive projects, most of which have been focused on nov­el VTOL research, devel­op­ment and flight demon­stra­tion pro­grams to extend VTOL per­for­mance and capa­bil­i­ties beyond that of con­ven­tion­al heli­copters. 

VFS announced in Jan­u­ary that Fabio Nan­noni was select­ed for the pres­ti­gious 2021 Alexan­der A. Nikol­sky Hon­orary Lec­ture­ship, award­ed to ‘an indi­vid­ual who has a high­ly dis­tin­guished career in ver­ti­cal flight air­craft research and devel­op­ment and is skilled at com­mu­ni­cat­ing tech­ni­cal knowl­edge and expe­ri­ence.’

Nan­noni is the Senior Vice Pres­i­dent for Safe­ty Man­age­ment Gov­er­nance for the Leonar­do Company’s Heli­copter Divi­sion, based in Casci­na Cos­ta, Italy. This, the 41st Annu­al Nikol­sky Lec­ture, will be enti­tled, ‘Rotor­craft Design: The Cru­cial Influ­ence of Safe­ty from Con­cept to Fleet Sup­port.’

It will pre­miere at 2pm EDT at www.youtube.com/VTOLsociety. The cer­e­mo­ny is open to the pub­lic. Descrip­tions of the awards and past recip­i­ents are avail­able at .