Vertical Flight Society announces winners of its inaugural DiversiFlite Scholars Programme

The Ver­ti­cal Flight Soci­ety (VFS) has announced three com­pet­i­tive­ly select­ed engi­neer­ing stu­dents at US minor­i­ty-serv­ing insti­tu­tions for its inau­gur­al 2022 Diver­si­Flite Schol­ars pro­gramme. 

The pro­gramme select­ed the fol­low­ing engi­neer­ing stu­dents for an all-expens­es-paid trip to the VFS’ annu­al Forum, which is the largest and longest-run­ning VTOL tech­ni­cal event in the world. It con­sists of 225 tech­ni­cal papers from over 30 invit­ed pre­sen­ta­tions by lead­ers in indus­try, acad­e­mia and gov­ern­ment, and near­ly 80 exhibitors. 

The win­ners of the first Diver­si­Flite Schol­ars pro­gramme are:

1. Dami­an Clogher, an aero­space engi­neer­ing stu­dent at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Irvine, an Asian Amer­i­can and Native Amer­i­can Pacif­ic Islander-Serv­ing Insti­tu­tion and a His­pan­ic-Serv­ing Insti­tu­tion (AANAPISI), who found­ed The Futur­ist Soci­ety in 2020 to hold week­ly meet­ings dis­cussing top­ics from urban air mobil­i­ty to space trav­el. 
2. Andre Davis, a mechan­i­cal engi­neer­ing stu­dent at Howard Uni­ver­si­ty in Wash­ing­ton DC, one of the His­tor­i­cal­ly Black Col­leges and Uni­ver­si­ties, with a keen inter­est in robot­ics, build­ing VTOL drones and steam­punk-inspired con­trap­tions. 
3. Patri­cia Paje, an aero­space engi­neer­ing stu­dent at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Davis AANAPISI, who recent­ly par­tic­i­pat­ed in an intern­ship with eVTOL air­craft pio­neer Wisk Aero in Moun­tain View, Cal­i­for­nia.

VFS will also pro­vide each schol­ar with a guide and men­tor for the event, spe­cial small-group meet­ings with aero­space indus­try lead­ers, and the oppor­tu­ni­ty to make new con­tacts with­in the ver­ti­cal flight tech­ni­cal com­mu­ni­ty.

VFS has esti­mat­ed that the 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.

The Diver­si­Flite ini­tia­tive will help the ver­ti­cal flight com­mu­ni­ty fos­ter a more inclu­sive envi­ron­ment through inclu­sion, diver­si­ty and equi­ty, with con­sid­er­a­tions for both the work­force and cus­tomers.

Found­ed as the Amer­i­can Heli­copter Soci­ety in 1943, VFS is an edu­ca­tion­al, char­i­ta­ble non-prof­it soci­ety for engi­neers, sci­en­tists and oth­ers work­ing on ver­ti­cal flight tech­nol­o­gy. 

For near­ly 80 years, the Soci­ety has been the glob­al leader for tech­ni­cal, edu­ca­tion­al, safe­ty, advo­ca­cy and oth­er impor­tant ini­tia­tives, bring­ing togeth­er indus­try, acad­e­mia and gov­ern­ment bod­ies around the world to tack­le the tough­est chal­lenges in ver­ti­cal flight.

Ear­li­er this month, VFS con­tin­ued to expe­ri­ence record growth to 173 mem­bers, a net growth of 23 organ­i­sa­tions, or 15 per cent from a year ago, and a dou­bling over the past five years.