Vertical Flight Society Announces 2023 DiversiFlite Winners

The Ver­ti­cal Flight Soci­ety yes­ter­day announced the select­ed par­tic­i­pants for this year’s Diver­si­Flite Schol­ars pro­gram, part of an ini­tia­tive to pro­mote sci­ence, tech­nol­o­gy, engi­neer­ing and math­e­mat­ics (STEM) careers for the future VTOL avi­a­tion work­force.

The pro­gram selects promis­ing engi­neer­ing stu­dents inter­est­ed in ver­ti­cal flight at US-rec­og­nized minor­i­ty-serv­ing insti­tu­tions (MSI) for an all-expens­es-paid trip to the Annu­al Forum, the world’s largest and longest serv­ing ver­ti­cal flight tech­ni­cal event.

The three win­ners will be recog­nised on 18 May 2023 dur­ing the Society’s 79th Annu­al Forum & Tech­nol­o­gy Dis­play in West Palm Beach, Flori­da.

Yassin Alal­laq is an aero­nau­ti­cal sci­ences major at Delaware State Uni­ver­si­ty, a His­tor­i­cal­ly Black Col­lege and Uni­ver­si­ty (HBCU). In high school, he joined the Air Force Junior Reserve Offi­cers’ Train­ing Corps and Civ­il Air Patrol and earned his pri­vate pilot’s license at Delaware State.

Feli­cie Tre­bian is work­ing towards her Bach­e­lor of Applied Sci­ence in Infor­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy at Nava­jo Tech­ni­cal Uni­ver­si­ty in Crown­point, New Mex­i­co, one of 32 fed­er­al­ly recog­nised Trib­al Col­leges and Uni­ver­si­ties (TCUs). She is eager to take advan­tage of the expe­ri­ence at the Forum.

Eszter Var­ga is an aero­space engi­neer­ing stu­dent at Vir­ginia Poly­tech­nic Insti­tute and State Uni­ver­si­ty, recog­nised by the US gov­ern­ment as an MSI. Despite endem­ic dis­crim­i­na­tion grow­ing up in Budapest (Hun­gary has the low­est num­ber of females in engi­neer­ing and STEM in the Euro­pean Union, 25% in 2017), she is com­plet­ing an accel­er­at­ed bachelors/masters degree pro­gram and expects that she will soon be the first female Hun­gar­i­an aero­space engi­neer.

The Annu­al Forum is the largest and longest-run­ning VTOL tech­ni­cal event in the world, with 260 tech­ni­cal papers, 50 invit­ed pre­sen­ta­tions by lead­ers in indus­try, acad­e­mia and gov­ern­ment, and 60+ exhibitors. In addi­tion to the all-expense-paid trip, VFS is also pro­vid­ing each Diver­si­Flite Schol­ar with guides, spe­cial small-group meet­ings with aero­space indus­try lead­ers, and the oppor­tu­ni­ty to make new con­tacts with­in the ver­ti­cal flight tech­ni­cal com­mu­ni­ty.

VFS cre­at­ed the Diver­si­Flite Schol­ars pro­gram to encour­age more engi­neer­ing/pre-engi­neer­ing stu­dents from under­served demo­graph­ics to con­sid­er careers in ver­ti­cal flight to meet the future needs of the indus­try.

VFS has esti­mat­ed that the future ver­ti­cal work­force will need an addi­tion­al 10,000 engi­neers over-and-above the cur­rent tal­ent pipeline to meet the require­ments of advanced rotor­craft and AAM devel­op­ment plans.