This past weekend, we held our annual Space Grant Award Ceremony at the New England Air Museum and had our biggest turnout yet! Eighty-eight award winners, faculty, and family members showed up to the museum, where they enjoyed a few snacks, a wonderful guest speaker, great presentations, and admission to the museum’s displays. The award winners brought posters outlining the work they were able to do with their grants, and they were given award certificates from Dr. Filburn.

Kurt Long, a Senior Research Engineer working at NASA Ames Research Center’s Fluid Mechanics Lab at Moffett Field, CA, was the event’s keynote speaker. Mr. Long enthralled the audience with descriptions and videos of the center’s projects in fluid mechanics, aerodynamics, wind tunnel testing, aero-acoustics, hybrid rockets, advanced instrumentation and planetary exploration vehicles.  He shared with the student grant winners who were present at the New England Air Museum about the beginning of his career, especially when he had no idea of the breadth of areas that aeronautics covers.

The awardees were from our affiliates all over the state, and their projects ranged from describing the geology of Mars to internships at Sikorsky Helicopter to a study investigating a human exoskeleton and everything in between.