On Dec. 9, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) announced its class of 2025 Fellows, including three Honorary Fellows and 28 Fellows.
Honorary Fellows included former NASA Administrator (2009–2017 Charles F. Bolden, Jr., founder and CEO Emeritus of the Charles F. Bolden Group. Bolden retired as a major general in the US Marine Corps, logging over 6,000 hours in more than 30 models of fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft. He was a four-time astronaut and has been awarded honorary doctorates from 11 different universities.
AIAA Fellows included VFS Director of Strategy Mike Hirschberg; current NASA Associate Administrator for Aeronautics Bob Pearce; and one of his predecessors, Dr. Lisa Porter.
Hirschberg was honored for “his efforts as an international leader and advocate for vertical flight technologies, including advanced air mobility (AAM).”
Pearce was recognized for his 40-plus-year career in industry and government, including 36 years at NASA. He was responsible for the addition of AAM into the NASA portfolio in both vehicle technologies and airspace systems.
Porter is currently the co-president and co-founder of LogiQ, Inc. In addition to work in industry, Porter served as a program manager at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in 2003–2005, where she started the DARPA/NASA Helicopter Quieting Program (HQP). This effort led to the first successful fully coupled computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and computational structural dynamics (CSD) solution, as well as the Boeing/NASA/DARPA Smart Materials Actuated Rotor Technology (SMART), which was used to generate test data to correlate predictions. She was then appointed as the NASA Associate Administrator for Aeronautics (2005–2008) — and was the keynote speaker at VFS Forum 63 in Virginia Beach, Virginia, in May 2007. In 2008, she was appointed the founding Director of the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA), and later became Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Research & Engineering (2018–2020).
“The Class of 2025 Honorary Fellows and Fellows are impressive aerospace professionals. They are dreamers who have transformed our understanding of flight and exploration, pushing the boundaries of human potential. I am privileged to call them friends and colleagues. Their groundbreaking work reminds me that innovation is born from passion, persistence, and the audacious belief that we can always reach a little further than we thought possible,” added AIAA CEO Clay Mowry.
The class will be inducted during a ceremony on April 29 in Washington, DC, and recognized during the AIAA Awards Gala on April 30.
Posted Dec. 10, 2024