Alumni

Hannah Lehman and Chris Leshikar Graduate with Ph.D.

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Hannah Lehman and Chris Leshikar graduated with their Ph.D. Degrees in Aerospace Engineering.Congratulations Hannah and Chris, VSCL is proud of your accomplishments!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hannah Lehman is the 62nd graduate student advised to completion of their degree by Dr. Valasek, and the title of her dissertation is “Hierarchical Auctions for the Coordination of Heterogeneous Agents using Machine Learning“. Hannah will be working at Sandia National Laboratories, where she has now done four graduate internships.

 

 

 

 

Chris Leshikar is the 63rd graduate student advised to completion of their degree by Dr. Valasek. Chris’s research was supported by the National Science Foundation under the Center for Autonomous Air Mobility and Sensors (CAAMS) and the title of his dissertation is “Markov Parameter Based Methods for System Identification“. Chris will begin seminary formation for the Catholic Diocese of Victoria later this year.

 

 

 

VSCL Students Graduate with Bachelor of Science Degrees

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Congratulations to the VSCL undergraduate research assistants who graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Aerospace Engineering from Texas A&M University on May 9th 2025!

VSCL Student Carla Zaramella Graduates with Bachelor of Science

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VSCL Undergraduate Carla Zaramella graduated in December 2024 with her Bachelor of Science degree in Aerospace Engineering. Carla will be joining VSCL as a Masters student starting in Spring 2025. She has been an active member of VSCL since January 2022 and has contributed towards the System Identification project and aided with Flight Testing. Carla has interned with Raytheon Technologies over the last two summers, working on land/air radar defense systems.

VSCL Students Graduate with B.S. Degrees

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Congratulations to the VSCL undergraduate research assistants who graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Aerospace Engineering from Texas A&M University on May 10th 2024!

VSCL Alumnus Ryan Weisman Awarded Technical Fellow of KBR

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VSCL alumnus Dr. Ryan Weisman ’12 has been inducted as a 2023 Fellow of KBR for his contributions in space situational awareness. Space superiority requires decision-making in ambiguous situations characterized by short timelines, reduced sensing, and conflicting information. Dr. Ryan Weisman’s work increases military space mission resilience to adversary parity, mission anomalies, and unforeseen situations by identifying and enabling operations under less explored, physically possible conditions beyond conventional, probable operating regimes. His operational tools provide warfighters proactive sensing recommendations, situation assessment, and solution confidence directly traceable to physics and data quality for navigation and vehicle safety without excessive data collection or exhaustive simulation.

Co-advised by Dr. John Valasek and Dr. Kyle T. Alfriend, Weisman was a recipient of the Science, Mathematics & Research for Transformation Fellowship (SMART) with the Air Force Research Laboratory, Albuquerque, NM, for which he was employed before joining KBR. KBR delivers science, technology and engineering solutions to governments and companies around the world

VSCL graduate student Kameron Eves inducted into the AIAA Guidance, Navigation, and Control Technical Committee

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Kameron Eves, a recently graduated Ph.D. student in the Vehicle Systems & Control Laboratory (VSCL), has been inducted into the AIAA Intelligent Systems Technical Committee (GNCTC) for 2024.  The GNCTC is a group within AIAA that seeks to advance the technology and provide forums for the theoretical and practical consideration of techniques, devices and systems for the navigation, guidance and control of flight vehicles and the control of related aerospace systems.  Eves was inducted due to his technical experience in nonlinear control.   

Eves’s primary research topic is adaptive control for hypersonic systems in addition to reinforcement learning, autonomous control, and vehicle dynamics.  In the VSCL, Eves also worked to develop the capabilities necessary for autonomous reconnaissance in military settings. This project was a partnership with the National Robotics Engineering Center (NREC) at Carnegie Mellon University. Eves earned his bachelor’s degree in 2019 from Brigham Young University in Mechanical Engineering and joined the VSCL immediately after.  At BYU, Eves worked in the Multiple Agent Intelligent Coordination and Control (MAGICC) laboratory As part of this research, Kameron helped to develop a ground based optical tracking and imaging system capable of estimating an aircraft’s pose.

VSCL Students Graduate with PhD, M.Eng., and B.S. Degrees

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VSCL graduate student Dr. Kameron Eves has graduated with his Doctor of Philosophy on May 13th in Aerospace Engineering.

VSCL graduate student Dr. Garrett Jares has graduated with his Doctor of Philosophy on May 13th in Aerospace Engineering.

VSCL graduate student Esteban Gomez has graduated with his Master of Science on May 13th in Aerospace Engineering.

VSCL graduate student Connor Atkins has graduated with his Master of Science on May 13th in Aerospace Engineering.

VSCL undergraduate student Alexander Gross has graduated with his Bachelors on May 12th in Aerospace Engineering.

VSCL undergraduate student Cameron Brooks has graduated with his Bachelors on May 12th in Aerospace Engineering.

VSCL undergraduate student Lauren Herrera has graduated with her Bachelors on May 12th in Aerospace Engineering.

VSCL undergraduate student Jillian Bennett has graduated with her Bachelors on May 12th in Aerospace Engineering.

 

 

VSCL Alumnus Bowers Awarded Northrop Grumman Fellow

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Roshawn Bowers ’03 & ’05, a former student in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at Texas A&M University, has been awarded a Northrop Grumman Fellow for Vehicle Management Systems and Flight Control Systems Integration. She is also co-sponsoring a new program at Northrop Grumman that focuses on recruiting and retaining women in senior technical roles. Bowers is currently an engineering manager who leads the development of advanced engineering systems for Northrop Grumman Aeronautics Systems in San Diego, California.

“I am very fortunate to have had great teachers and mentors to help me along the way,” said Bowers. “I feel like I got a first-class education at Texas A&M, and I don’t believe any other university could have prepared me better for my career.”

As an undergraduate and graduate student, Bowers conducted research in the Vehicle Systems & Control Laboratory with Dr. John Valasek, professor in the aerospace engineering department. She researched relative navigation systems and assisted with flight testing of an unmanned powered parachute vehicle for NASA’s X-38 project. At the conclusion of her graduate degree, she defended her Master of Science thesis titled “Estimation algorithm for autonomous aerial refueling utilizing a vision based relative navigation system” in April 2005 and then joined Northrop Grumman.

Previously, Bowers had done co-op tours at Lockheed Martin Space Operations in Houston on the International Space Station Extravehicular Activity Test Team and the Environmental Control and Life Support Systems team. She also did a co-op on the F-16 Block 60 program for Lockheed Martin Aeronautics in Fort Worth, Texas.

While in school at Texas A&M, Bowers researched the Automatic Carrier Landing System as a member of the Engineering Scholars Program and received the Texas A&M Graduate Merit Fellowship and the Isadore Roosth ’33 Engineering Scholarship. She was the chairman of Sigma Gamma Tau, the Aerospace Engineering Honor Society, and a member of Phi Eta Sigma, the Freshman Honor Society. Bowers participated in the Texas A&M Engineering High School Conference, Help One Student To Succeed (HOSTS), and Aggie Replant.

The official College of Engineering press release can be found here.

VSCL Alumnus Mia Brown Accepts Position at NASA Johnson Space Center

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VSCL Alumnus Mia Brown ’20 has accepted a new position as a Flight Controller at NASA Johnson Space Center. Mia will be working as a flight controller in mission control for the Robotics Team (ROBO). The job of a flight controller in mission control is to plan and help execute missions to/from the International Space Station (ISS). As part of team ROBO, Mia will work with the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) to operate the robotic arm and primarily focus on fixing things on the outside of the ISS, capturing/releasing vehicles that come aboard the space station, and also assist with crew extravehicular activity (EVA) missions.

Mia is a graduate of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering with a major in Computer Engineering. She started working with VSCL in the Spring of 2017, with her major roles including working in the Texas A&M University Engineering Flight Simulator and helping to develop a means for evaluating human factors aspects for Head Mounted Displays (HMD) for Enhanced Vision System technologies. Previously, Mia worked for Dell Technologies as a Security Analyst where she helped to manage the security of Dell’s information.

VSCL Students Graduate with M.S., M.Eng., and B.S. Degrees

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VSCL graduate student Ritwik Bera has graduated with his Master of Science in Aerospace Engineering. Ritwik successfully defended his thesis “A Modular Framework for Training Autonomous Systems via Human Interaction” in December 2021. He is now working with Zoox in Foster CIty, CA as a Software Engineer in the Planning and Control department working on trajectory generation algorithms. Ritwik joined VSCL in 2019 after having spent a summer working with the lab in 2017 and has focused much of his work on human-in-the-loop learning to train autonomous systems to perform various tasks. Ritwik has also led the efforts for the Enhancing the Cycle-of-Learning for Autonomous Systems to Facilitate Human-Agent Teaming project.

 

 

 

VSCL graduate student Shelby Hackett has graduated with her Master of Engineering in Aerospace Engineering. Shelby will be going to work for Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA where she will be a part of the guidance, navigation, and control systems group and will aid in various space missions. Shelby has been a member of VSCL since Fall 2020 and has worked on a number of projects including Tightly Integrated Navigation and Guidance for Multiple Autonomous Agents. She has also served as a Teaching Assistant for AERO 321: Dynamics of Aerospace Vehicles and aided undergraduate students in learning aircraft stability and control.

 

 

 

 

VSCL graduate student Blake Krpec has graduated with his Master of Science in Aerospace Engineering. Blake successfully defended his thesis “Vision-Based Marker-Less Landing of a UAS On a Moving Ground Vehicle” in March 2022. He is now working as an Engineer in the Applied Sensing Department for Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, TX. Blake began working with VSCL during the fall semester of his sophomore year (Fall 2016) as an undergraduate research assistant and began working on his masters in August 2019. Blake was selected to be a Journeyman Fellow for the Army Research Lab and his main research interests include computer vision, controls using computer vision, and traditional controls applied to unmanned air systems

 

 

 

VSCL undergraduate research assistant Dakota Kridler has graduated with his Bachelor of Science in Aerospace Engineering. Dakota will be working as a Flight Test & Systems Engineer for Albers Aerospace in McKinney, TX. He has been working with VSCL since January 2019 and has worked to develop the air vehicle autonomy on the Agile Technology Development (ATD) – Air-Ground Coordinated Teaming project. Dakota is also a US Army veteran who served from 2012 to 2017 as an Infantryman during the Inherent Resolve Campaign.

 

 

 

 

VSCL undergraduate research assistant Luke Moy has graduated with his Bachelor of Science in Aerospace Engineering. Luke will be working as an R&D Engineer 1 at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Luke has been a member of VSCL since August 2020 and has been involved in much of the flight testing operations at RELLIS Campus. Luke has also been an integral part of the Tightly Integrated Navigation and Guidance for Multiple Autonomous Agents project.