People

Autonomy

Jillian Bennett

Jillian Bennett, a member of VSCL since March of 2023, graduated in May of 2023 with her Bachelor of Science in Aerospace Engineering and Minor in Mathematics and in August of 2025 with her Master of Science in Aerospace Engineering. She began her PhD with the lab in the Fall of 2025. Jillian has been an active member of the Aerospace Ambassador program since the Spring of 2021, becoming lead ambassador her senior year. She also welcomed freshmen to Texas A&M as a Fish Camp chair in the Summer of 2022. Additionally, in the Summer of 2022 she was the recipient of the Undergraduate Student Research Grant from Texas A&M. She has interned with Los Alamos National Laboratory and TAMU Material Science and Engineering, working on characterizing impacted materials. She has changed paths, gaining an interest in flight test engineering, multiple time scale systems, and adaptive controls. She is working on her dissertation project with the Office of Naval Research on Adaptive Control for Multiple Time Scale Systems. She is a two time recipient of the Aerospace Graduate Excellence Fellowship and a recipient of the 2025 Stanger Endowed Fellowship and the 2025 Outstanding Mentoring Award for Graduate and Professional Students.

Garrett Jares

Garrett Jares is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at Texas A&M University, a 2020 NSF Graduate Research Fellow, and a Graduate Research Assistant in the Vehicle Systems & Control Laboratory. Garrett earned his B.S. degree in Computer Science from Texas A&M University with minors in Cybersecurity and Mathematics, graduating Magna Cum Laude in 2017. He has been working in the Vehicle Systems & Control Laboratory (VSCL) with his advisor, Dr. John Valasek, since his undergraduate senior capstone project in 2017. During his undergraduate education, Garrett studied extensively in cybersecurity including research in cryptography topics. Garrett’s work with VSCL has involved developing embedded systems for Unmanned Air Systems (UAS), conducting UAS flight testing operations, and overseeing the operation of the Engineering Flight Simulator Laboratory. Garrett is combining his undergraduate knowledge in Computer Science with his experience gained in Aerospace Engineering to investigate Cybersecurity for air and space vehicles.

Garrett’s doctoral dissertation investigates cyber-attacks that are designed to take control of an aircraft by targeting the vehicle’s sensor data. This research will help identify and better understand the vulnerabilities in current systems and develop safeguards against such attacks. Garrett is a recipient of the 2020 NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, the Crawford & Hattie Jackson Foundation Scholarship, the Edward C. Clay ’47 Memorial Scholarship, and the 2018 Lechner Graduate Fellowship.

Publications:

Jares, Garrett, and Valasek, John, “Flight Demonstration and Validation of Control Acquisition Autopilot Attack,” AIAA-2022, 2022 AIAA SCITECH Forum and Exposition, 6 January 2022.

Jares, Garrett, and Valasek, John, “Investigating Malware-in-the-Loop Autopilot Attack Using Falsification of Sensor Data,” FrB4.5, 2021 International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft Systems, Athens, Greece, 15-18 June 2021.

Jares, Garrett, and Valasek, John, “Investigating Takeover of Aerospace Systems via Falsification of Sensor Data,” AIAA-2021, 2021 AIAA AVIATION Forum and Exposition, 2 August 2021.

Hannah Lehman

lehman@tamu.edu

Hannah Lehman graduated in May 2020 with a Bachelor’s degree from the Department of Aerospace Engineering at Texas A&M University. She has accepted a Graduate Research Fellowship and has joined the Ph.D. program in aerospace engineering starting summer 2020. Dr. John Valasek serves as her research Advisor and Chair of dissertation committee. As a Graduate Research Assistant Hannah researches Tightly Integrated Navigation and Guidance for Multiple Autonomous Agents, which is sponsored by Sandia National Laboratory. She is also participating in a remote 2020 summer internship at Sandia National Laboratory.

Hannah has been an active member of VSCL since Fall 2017, focusing on human-machine interaction and the control of UAS with Machine Learning. She graduated with the B.S. degree in aerospace engineering as a University Scholar, University Honors, and Engineering Honors in May 2020. She has been awarded the 2020 Graduate Merit Fellowship, 2019/2020 AIAA Foundation Cary Spitzer Digital Avionics Scholarship, the 2019 Gathright Phi Kappa Phi Outstanding Junior in the College of Engineering, and placed 1^st in the 2018 AIAA Region IV Student Paper Conference.