Vertical Flight Society announces this year’s winners of its Individual Awards Programme, to be recognised at Forum 78

The Ver­ti­cal Flight Soci­ety (VFS) has announced the indi­vid­ual recip­i­ents of its 2022 Awards pro­gramme, which pays trib­ute to the out­stand­ing lead­ers of ver­ti­cal flight and has served as a cat­a­lyst for stim­u­lat­ing tech­no­log­i­cal advances.

This year’s win­ners will be recog­nised at the Grand Awards Break­fast on Thurs­day, May 12th dur­ing the Society’s 78th Annu­al Forum & Tech­nol­o­gy Dis­play in Fort Worth, Texas. 

VFS Exec­u­tive Direc­tor, Mike Hirschberg, said: “Every year since 1944, the Ver­ti­cal Flight Soci­ety has recog­nised the lead­ing con­trib­u­tors to advanc­ing ver­ti­cal flight. This year’s awe-inspir­ing win­ners have all made incred­i­ble con­tri­bu­tions over many decades of work that will have an impact for many decades to come.”

The title of Hon­orary Fel­low is grant­ed to high­ly dis­tin­guished Soci­ety mem­bers who have made excep­tion­al lead­er­ship, inno­v­a­tive and/or oth­er mer­i­to­ri­ous con­tri­bu­tions that have sig­nif­i­cant­ly advanced VFS and the ver­ti­cal flight com­mu­ni­ty dur­ing their career. The 2022 Hon­orary Fel­low is Philip J. Alldridge, Flight Test Fel­low at Siko­rsky, a Lock­heed Mar­tin Com­pa­ny.

As a mem­ber of VFS for over 40 years, Alldridge has pro­vid­ed extra­or­di­nary con­tri­bu­tions in rotor­craft flight test devel­op­ment, design and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. He was instru­men­tal in devel­op­ing fly-by-wire con­trol sys­tem cer­ti­fi­ca­tion pol­i­cy for the CH-148 Cyclone and mod­ern­iz­ing exist­ing pol­i­cy for rotor­craft with tra­di­tion­al mechan­i­cal flight con­trols.

He has also been an indus­try leader in devel­op­ing cer­ti­fi­ca­tion tech­niques and cri­te­ria for flight into known icing con­di­tions for both civ­il and mil­i­tary rotor­craft. Alldridge has start­ed VFS chap­ters in Cana­da and Flori­da, served across mul­ti­ple VFS com­mit­tees, chaired sev­er­al Forum ses­sions and increased VFS mem­ber­ship.

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 2022 VFS Tech­ni­cal Fel­lows are:

• Prof. Ken­neth S. Brent­ner, Pro­fes­sor of Aero­space Engi­neer­ing, the Penn­syl­va­nia State Uni­ver­si­ty. Brent­ner is one of the fore­most experts in rotor­craft exter­nal noise, and his work has great­ly ben­e­fit­ted a wide spec­trum of indus­try and gov­ern­ment researchers seek­ing to under­stand crit­i­cal issues in noise for rotor­craft. His tech­ni­cal con­tri­bu­tions over 40 years at NASA and Penn State have been of great ser­vice to the ver­ti­cal flight aeroa­coustics com­mu­ni­ty
• Dr. Ashish Bagai, Founder and Prin­ci­pal at buGi Aero, LLC. Bagai has made sem­i­nal con­tri­bu­tions to ver­ti­cal flight over a three-decade career span­ning acad­e­mia, indus­try and the gov­ern­ment, with pro­found impacts on Future Ver­ti­cal Lift (FVL) and elec­tric ver­ti­cal take­off and land­ing (eVTOL) devel­op­ments
• Daniel Waschs­press, Senior Asso­ciate at Con­tin­u­um Dynam­ics. Waschs­press has con­duct­ed supe­ri­or tech­ni­cal research, sup­port­ing advances in the under­stand­ing of rotary-wing aero­dy­nam­ics and in the crit­i­cal deriv­a­tive appli­ca­tions of full-air­craft aero­me­chan­ics and acoustics, and has spear­head­ed the embod­i­ment of these advanced capa­bil­i­ties in wide­ly used and acces­si­ble soft­ware tools
• Lar­ry A. Young, Aero­space Engi­neer at NASA. Young has been the lead­ing NASA researcher and advo­cate for plan­e­tary rotor­craft, result­ing in the suc­cess­ful Inge­nu­ity Mars Heli­copter and plans for the Mars Sci­ence Heli­copter. Young has also con­duct­ed ground-break­ing research on a range of advanced rotor­craft con­cepts, fun­da­men­tal rotor aero­dy­nam­ics, small and full-scale rotor test­ing, and devel­op­ment of reduced-order mod­els with a focus on rotor wake aero­dy­nam­ics inter­ac­tions

The John J. Schnei­der His­tor­i­cal Achieve­ment Award is giv­en in recog­ni­tion of dis­tin­guished achieve­ment by an indi­vid­ual in encour­ag­ing appre­ci­a­tion of, and enhanc­ing access to, the his­to­ry and lega­cy of ver­ti­cal flight air­craft. This year’s recip­i­ent Paul D. Fal­tyn, Cura­tor Emer­i­tus of the Nia­gara Aero­space Muse­um. Fal­tyn has ded­i­cat­ed much of his life to pre­serv­ing the his­to­ry and tech­no­log­i­cal achieve­ments of the Buf­fa­lo and Nia­gara Falls avi­a­tion his­to­ry, with a spe­cial focus on the ear­ly Bell his­to­ry in the area.

The annu­al 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 award recip­i­ent is Patrick Darm­stadt, Mechan­i­cal Design Engi­neer at the Boe­ing Com­pa­ny. Darm­stadt has made sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions on ver­ti­cal lift tech­nol­o­gy, espe­cial­ly towards propul­sion sys­tems and dri­ve­trains, and safe elec­tric propul­sion.

The Society’s Paul E. Haueter Award is giv­en for an out­stand­ing tech­ni­cal con­tri­bu­tion to the field of ver­ti­cal take-off and land­ing (VTOL) air­craft devel­op­ment oth­er than a heli­copter or an oper­a­tional ver­ti­cal flight air­craft. The 2022 Haueter Award is award­ed to Dr. Mar­tine Roth­blatt, founder, and chair of the board of Unit­ed Ther­a­peu­tics. Roth­blatt has insti­gat­ed mul­ti­ple earth-shat­ter­ing inno­va­tions that have trans­formed soci­ety for the bet­ter in the fields of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, med­i­cine and elec­tric avi­a­tion.

Descrip­tions of the awards and past recip­i­ents are avail­able at .