Awards

Dr. John Valasek received two distinguishing awards during the Spring 2024 semester. In the Faculty Excellence Awards category, Valasek was awarded the College of Engineering Teaching Impact Award. This award recognizes individuals who have had a profound impact on students through their teaching. Valasek received the award for the career achievements of his former graduate and undergraduate students.

Valasek was also awarded the Engineering Genesis Award for Multidisciplinary Research. This award was created to honor Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station (TEES) researchers who have secured a grant of $1 million or more for a research project. Valasek is the PI for the project: “Enhancing the Cycle-of-Learning for Autonomous Systems to Facilitate Human-Agent Teaming”.

For the Fall of 2025, Jillian Bennett received the Aerospace Engineering Graduate Excellence Fellowship, a competitive fellowship selected by the AERO Graduate Program Committee with an award of $1,000.

Jillian is a Master of Science student, with a focus in Dynamics & Control. She is currently on the KAMS project, working on adaptive control for multiple time scale systems. She has been in the VSCL since Spring 2023, working on flight testing for the System Identification project and extending KAMS as part of her thesis work. Jillian has an interest in flight testing, nonlinear control, and vehicle dynamics.

VSCL graduate student Cassie-Kay McQuinn is the recipient of the J. Malon Southerland Aggie Leader Scholarship. The J. Malon Southerland Aggie Leader Scholarship program was created to recognize and reward students involvement at Texas A&M University. The scholarship was named in honor of J. Malon Southerland, former TAMU Vice President for Student Affairs. While a student at Texas A&M Cassie-Kay has been involved in leadership through membership of the Student Engineers’ Council (SEC), completion of the Zachry Leadership Program (ZLP), and has been Vice President then President of the Texas A&M chapter of Sigma Gamma Tau (SGT) the National Honor Society for Aerospace Engineering.

 

VSCL Graduate Assistant Researcher, Jillian Bennett, is a recipient of the Graduate Excellence Fellowship Award for Spring 2024. This is a competitive, merit-based fellowship awarded to students by the Aerospace Engineering Graduate Committee. The fellowship includes a $1,000 supplemental award for Spring 2024.

Jillian is a Master of Science student, with a focus in Dynamics & Control. She is currently on the KAMS project, working on adaptive control for multiple time scale systems. She has been in the VSCL since Spring 2023, previously working on flight testing for the System Identification project. Jillian has an interest in flight testing, nonlinear control, and vehicle dynamics.

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

Ph.D. student Kameron Eves received two awards from the Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching, and Learning (CIRTL), a national organization supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) with 41 member universities.  Eves received the CIRTL Scholar Certificate which recognizes students who have advanced and disseminated research about evidence-based teaching practices for diverse learners. Eves also received the Bednarz Award which annually recognizes a doctoral student for their superior quality evidence-based teaching research and for the depth of their involvement at CIRTL. He received these awards for his work in the Teaching-as-Research (TAR) CIRTL program which supports aspiring faculty who perform evidenced-based teaching research projects.

Eves credits this instruction and experience with preparing him well for his career faculty position.  “I’m honored to have been selected as the 2023 Texas A&M CIRTL Bednarz award recipient and I’m pleased to have also met the requirements for the CIRTL Scholar award. Participating in CIRTL programs throughout my graduate career significantly altered my perspective on education and the role of teachers. I’m particularly grateful for Dr. Valasek’s role as my advisor and exemplar in this endeavor”

Eves’s project investigated the effects of question phraseology on student participation. Specifically, he examined if lowering the social cost and providing a clear method of response affected the quantity of participation and how that participation varied across demographic groups. During his graduate career, Eves participated in several CIRTL programs including the TAR program and the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC).

Eves graduated from Texas A&M University in May 2023 and is currently an Assistant Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering at Utah Tech University, St. George, UT.

VSCL Undergraduate Research Assistant Alex Gross is one of two AERO student recipients of the new College of Engineering Horizons: 21 Fellowships for 21st Century Scholars (EHDF). The EHDF provides 21 research fellowships for domestic students beginning their PhD program at Texas A&M University. This fellowship includes a $30,000 fellowship stipend provided by the College of Engineering (COE) during the first year of doctoral studies, full tuition and required student fees for full-time enrollment, a professional development scholarship of $1,500 for first year, mentorship, and funding provided by the Department of Aerospace Engineering via a Graduate Assistantship (Teaching or Research) during subsequent years.

Gross is an Engineering Honors undergraduate student pursuing his B.S. degree in aerospace engineering with minors in mathematics and computer science.  He is currently a Year-Round Undergraduate Research and Development Intern at Sandia National Laboratories, working on the  Autonomy for Hypersonics program.  Gross is a recipient of the prestigious AIAA Cary Spitzer Digital Avionics Scholarship, the Herman F. Heep Scholarship, the Benjamin R and Deaana J Smith Scholarship, and the Dean’s Honor Roll.  Gross is currently President of the TAMU AIAA Student Branch, and Secretary of the TAMU Students for the Exploration and Development of Space.  He is a 2020 award-Winning Proposal recipient of the  L’SPACE NASA Proposal Writing and Evaluation Experience Academy.

Gross has been a member of VSCL since 2020 and is currently working on the research project Enhancing the Cycle-of-Learning for Autonomous Systems to Facilitate Human-Agent Teaming , and he has contributed to the Autonomous Intelligent Detection Tracking and Recognition (AIDTR)  and Agile Technology Development (ATD)  – Air-Ground Coordinated Teaming  projects.  He also Investigated and developed reinforcement learning algorithms for training of Mars rover vehicles for NASA JPL.  His research interests are on UAS autonomous guidance and landing, embedded systems, and user-interface integration.  His goal is to work in the aerospace industry as a vehicle guidance, navigation and control engineer for spaceflight vehicles.

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

Maison Clouatre, a graduate student in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at Texas A&M University, has received two prestigious awards, the 2022 National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) Fellowship and the 2022 National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowships Program (GRFP).  Clouatre selected the NDSEG Fellowship, which is awarded annually to students in recognition of their academic excellence and STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) achievements.  Awardees receive full tuition and coverage for all mandatory fees for up to three years at any accredited U.S. college or university that provides advanced degrees in science and engineering, as well as a monthly stipend of $3,400.

Clouatre, a Ph.D. student, graduated in May 2022 with a double major in electrical engineering and mathematics from Mercer University.  He is both a Goldwater Scholar and Stamps Scholar, and previously held visiting research positions in the Electronic Systems (ELSYS) Laboratory at the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) and the Laboratory for Information & Decision Systems (LIDS) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Clouatre is co-advised by professor John Valasek in the aerospace engineering department, and professor Mark Balas in the mechanical engineering department.  He first experienced engineering at Texas A&M University as an NSF Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) student in 2019, working with Valasek in the Vehicle Systems & Control Laboratory (VSCL).  Clouatre says “It is an overwhelming honor to receive the support of both NSF GRFP and DoD NDSEG.  However, without Professor Valasek, who has persistently invested in me since I was a freshman in college, these awards would not be possible.  His most recent investment was introducing me to Professor Balas—a kind mentor and truly keen mind.  After carefully considering both awards, I zealously look forward to using the NDSEG fellowship to innovate alongside Valasek and Balas as a graduate student at Texas A&M University.”

Clouatre’s research interests lie at the intersection of control theory, optimization, and learning, and he ventures to use these techniques to engineer advanced quantum information devices.  His NDSEG application identified a major hurdle for moving beyond Noisy Intermediate Scale Quantum (NISQ) devices: quantum bits which are strongly coupled with their environment.  In such regimes, a quantum bit dissipates quantum information into its environment and limits the lifetime of data stored in the qubit’s state.  Clouatre will use the NDSEG fellowship to work with Professors Valasek and Balas to develop new quantum control schemes which mitigate environmental couplings and lead to more robust quantum information units.

Valasek says that Clouatre “Maison is an exceptional person, and student, that personifies ‘hard work really does pay off’.  He brings tremendous energy and enthusiasm to learning and research, and especially elevates the experience of everyone around him.  I enjoyed working with him very much during REU, and now that he is attending TAMU for his doctorate I get to work with him every day.  We are very fortunate to have him in the Vehicle Systems & Control Laboratory.”