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Vertical Flight Society announces the 2023 Winners of its Individual Awards

The Ver­ti­cal Flight Soci­ety (VFS) has today announced the indi­vid­ual recip­i­ents of its 2023 awards, which has served as a cat­a­lyst for stim­u­lat­ing tech­no­log­i­cal advances for near­ly 80 years.

This year’s win­ners will be recog­nised at the 79th Annu­al Grand Awards Ban­quet on Thurs­day 18th May 2023 at the Society’s Forum & Tech­nol­o­gy Dis­play in West Palm Beach, Flori­da.

“The Society’s first awards were grant­ed in 1944, when Igor Siko­rsky and Colonel Franklin Gre­go­ry were grant­ed Hon­orary Fel­low­ships,” said VFS Exec­u­tive Direc­tor Mike Hirschberg.

The title of Hon­orary Fel­low is grant­ed to Robert Hood, Prin­ci­pal Con­sul­tant at QUARTEK Engi­neer­ing Ser­vices, and Tomasz Krysin­s­ki, vice pres­i­dent of research and inno­va­tion at Air­bus Heli­copters.

Robert Hood has over near­ly a half-cen­tu­ry made count­less con­tri­bu­tions to the rotor­craft com­mu­ni­ty and aero­space sec­tor at large, from the VFS Aus­tralia Chap­ter to the edu­ca­tion of next-gen­er­a­tion rotor­craft engi­neers at the Roy­al Mel­bourne Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy, and as tech­ni­cal chair for a num­ber of VFS Aus­tralian-Pacif­ic con­fer­ences.

Tomasz Krysin­s­ki has over 35 years’ expe­ri­ence in devel­op­ing advanced rotor­craft, includ­ing today’s Rac­er com­pound heli­copter, as well as author­ing two books, 18 VFS and Euro­pean Rotor­craft Forum tech­ni­cal papers and 12 patents, men­tor­ing gen­er­a­tions of new engi­neer­ing lead­ers includ­ing 26 PhD stu­dents, and, most recent­ly, lead­ing the VFS Board of Direc­tors.

The title of Tech­ni­cal Fel­low is grant­ed to Oliv­er Dieterich, senior expert on rotor­craft dynam­ics at Air­bus Heli­copters, for his con­tri­bu­tions to the field of applied heli­copter dynam­ics and vibra­tions, com­pu­ta­tion­al and exper­i­men­tal dynam­ics, and aero­me­chan­ics.

Sim­i­lar­ly Joseph Horn, pro­fes­sor of aero­space engi­neer­ing at The Penn­syl­va­nia State Uni­ver­si­ty is grant­ed the title of Tech­ni­cal Fel­low for 30 years of research in the areas of flight con­trols, sim­u­la­tion, han­dling qual­i­ties and aero­me­chan­ics.

Dr Rajneesh Singh, team lead at US Army Com­bat Capa­bil­i­ties Devel­op­ment Com­mand (DEVCOM) Army Research Lab­o­ra­to­ry is grant­ed the title of Tech­ni­cal Fel­low for research in com­pu­ta­tion­al aero­me­chan­ics, strate­gic lead­er­ship for expand­ing col­lab­o­ra­tions, assem­bling teams for trans­for­ma­tive research, and men­tor­ing the future work­force.

Dr Berend van der Wall, senior rotor­craft expert at the Ger­man Aero­space Cen­tre is grant­ed the title of Tech­ni­cal Fel­low for com­pre­hen­sive sim­u­la­tion code capa­bil­i­ties, while push­ing for­ward the under­stand­ing of unsteady air­foil aero­dy­nam­ics, blade vor­tex inter­ac­tion (BVI), and the effect of high­er har­mon­ic con­trol on BVI and vibra­tion, using exper­i­men­tal and ana­lyt­i­cal approach­es.

The John Schnei­der His­tor­i­cal Achieve­ment Award is giv­en to Arthur Lin­den, the for­mer Boe­ing-Siko­rsky Comanche Pro­gram Direc­tor. In addi­tion to a long career at Siko­rsky, was recog­nised for the his­tor­i­cal book, ‘The RAH-66 Comanche Heli­copter: Tech­ni­cal Accom­plish­ments, Pro­gram Frus­tra­tion’.

The annu­al François-Xavier Bag­noud Award is giv­en to a Soci­ety mem­ber, who is 35 years old or younger, and this year goes to Dr Natasha Schatz­man, research aero­space engi­neer for flight vehi­cle acoustics at NASA Ames Research Cen­ter. She was rec­og­nized for exten­sive con­tri­bu­tions to the VFS tech­ni­cal com­mu­ni­ty and local VFS San Fran­cis­co Bay Area Chap­ter, and for out­stand­ing men­tor­ship in the rotor­craft field.

The Society’s Paul Haueter Award is award­ed to Alex Stoll, Joby Aviation’s first full-time employ­ee, who was trag­i­cal­ly killed in a car acci­dent in Feb­ru­ary. A pio­neer of elec­tric flight and low-noise propul­sion, Stoll devel­oped a com­pre­hen­sive sys­tem opti­mi­sa­tion mod­el that result­ed in the Joby elec­tric VTOL air taxi designs. Stoll was a co-inven­tor on 21 patents, a co-author of numer­ous tech­ni­cal papers, and an active offi­cer of the VFS San Fran­cis­co Bay Area Chap­ter.

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Jason Pritchard

Jason Pritchard is the Editor of eVTOL Insights. He holds a BA from Leicester's De Montfort University and has worked in Journalism and Public Relations for more than a decade. Outside of work, Jason enjoys playing and watching football and golf. He also has a keen interest in Ancient Egypt.

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