Mike Hirschberg of Vertical Flight Society awarded Exceptional Public Service Medal from NASA for ‘exceptional contributions to its mission’

Ver­ti­cal Flight Soci­ety’s Direc­tor of Strat­e­gy Mike Hirschberg has received the Excep­tion­al Pub­lic Ser­vice Medal (EPSM) from the Nation­al Aero­nau­tics and Space Admin­is­tra­tion (NASA).

The pres­ti­gious recog­ni­tion is award­ed to ‘any indi­vid­ual who was not a Gov­ern­ment employ­ee dur­ing the peri­od in which the ser­vice was per­formed. This award is grant­ed for excep­tion­al con­tri­bu­tions to NASA’s mis­sion.”

Dur­ing the NASA Ames Research Center’s 2023 Pres­i­den­tial Rank & NASA Hon­ors Awards cer­e­mo­ny, which were held on May 22nd, some 73 indi­vid­ual and 27 group awards were giv­en to NASA employ­ees, con­trac­tors and groups.

This includ­ed many NASA employ­ees and teams work­ing on advanc­ing ver­ti­cal flight, advanced air mobil­i­ty and plan­e­tary explo­ration rotor­craft.

Of the 100 awards, Hirschberg was the only indi­vid­ual award recip­i­ent who was nei­ther a NASA employ­ee nor con­trac­tor.

Com­ment­ing on this achieve­ment, he said: “Receiv­ing the EPSM award was the most hum­bling hon­or in my 33-year career. The incred­i­ble achieve­ments of the oth­er 99 recip­i­ents — includ­ing many by VFS mem­bers — was a tour de force of sci­en­tif­ic break­throughs, advance­ments and career accom­plish­ments by the nation’s aero­space sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy research lead­ers.”

Hirschberg was nom­i­nat­ed last year by Dr. Bill Warm­brodt, Chief of the Aero­me­chan­ics Branch at NASA Ames in Moun­tain View, Cal­i­for­nia. 

read: “For excep­tion­al inter­na­tion­al lead­er­ship and advo­ca­cy of ver­ti­cal lift tech­nolo­gies and aggres­sive sup­port of advanced air mobil­i­ty devel­op­ment and work­place diver­si­ty.”

Warm­brodt, who was the first recip­i­ent of a VFS Ver­ti­cal Flight Foun­da­tion (VFF) schol­ar­ship in 1977, was also rec­og­nized for his 45 years of ser­vice to NASA at the cer­e­mo­ny.

Hirschberg served as the Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of the Soci­ety for 12 years, begin­ning in 2011, when it was then known as the Amer­i­can Heli­copter Soci­ety (AHS). He then stepped down from the exec­u­tive role last year, to bet­ter use his tal­ents in the pur­suit of the Society’s goal of advanc­ing ver­ti­cal flight. 

 read in part: “For excep­tion­al lead­er­ship dur­ing his tenure as the Exec­u­tive Direc­tor [where he] tran­si­tioned the organ­i­sa­tion to the more prop­er­ly named Ver­ti­cal Flight Soci­ety (VFS).”

In addi­tion, VFS ‘began sup­port­ing and orga­niz­ing the elec­tric ver­ti­cal take­off and land­ing (eVTOL) rev­o­lu­tion in 2013. The VFS con­tin­ues to be the lead­ing inter­na­tion­al orga­ni­za­tion for the eVTOL sec­tor engag­ing indus­try, acad­e­mia, and gov­ern­ment.‘

The nom­i­na­tion con­tin­ued: “Hirschberg has been an inter­na­tion­al leader and advo­cate for ver­ti­cal lift tech­nolo­gies, writ­ing many arti­cles and com­men­taries on the promise of advanced aer­i­al mobil­i­ty (AAM) and build­ing indus­try-wide sup­port for NASA’s AAM ini­tia­tives.”

The NASA write-up also not­ed the Soci­ety’s, as ‘a leader in this tran­si­tion­al peri­od of ver­ti­cal flight to address the future ver­ti­cal lift work­force to be inclu­sive and diverse.’

Hirschberg has writ­ten a series of arti­cles and com­men­taries on work­force and diver­si­ty, and has been a vocal advo­cate for more inclu­sive and acces­si­ble work envi­ron­ments. Mr. Hirschberg has quan­ti­fied the huge gap in women and minor­i­ty ver­ti­cal flight engi­neers in the ver­ti­cal lift com­mu­ni­ty.

Through the stu­dent chap­ters of the Ver­ti­cal Flight Soci­ety, NASA’s Aero­me­chan­ics Branch in par­tic­u­lar have been suc­cess­ful in address­ing this gap with ear­ly diverse career hires.

The nom­i­na­tion con­clud­ed: “Mr. Hirschberg has demon­strat­ed excel­lence in lead­ing both the tech­ni­cal rev­o­lu­tion in ver­ti­cal lift, and trans­form­ing its work­force for the bet­ter.”

Found­ed as the Amer­i­can Heli­copter Soci­ety in 1943, the Ver­ti­cal Flight Soci­ety is the glob­al non-prof­it soci­ety for engi­neers, sci­en­tists and oth­ers work­ing on ver­ti­cal flight tech­nol­o­gy.

For more than 80 years, the Soci­ety has led tech­ni­cal, safe­ty, advo­ca­cy and oth­er impor­tant ini­tia­tives, and has been the pri­ma­ry forum for inter­change of infor­ma­tion on ver­ti­cal flight tech­nol­o­gy.

Main image cap­tion: L‑R: Dr. David Korsmey­er, Mike Hirschberg, and Dr. Eugene Tu, NASA Ames Research Cen­ter Direc­tor. (NASA pho­to).