Purdue School of Aeronautics and Astronautics

10/27/2026

Congratulations to AAE Purdue Alumnus Gregory McKiernan (MSAAE '15, PhD AAE '20) for being named a 38 by 38 Honoree!

McKiernan serves as senior professional staff at The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. He works closely with the BOLT-1B hypersonic flight experiment, a project supported by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, co-authoring multiple publications on research for flight measurements and structural design.

McKiernan will be formally honored alongside other honorees at a reception on October 29.

Help recognize exceptional alumni by submitting a nomination for next year’s honorees.

More information here: https://buff.ly/QA9zvy9

10/25/2026

AAE professor Karen Marais is on a committee with the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to examine the vital roles played by individuals in the aviation workforce play in maintaining commercial aviation safety. The report considers how changes in the workforce can be better understood and monitored, and how the human contribution to safety can become a more visible and actionable part of aviation safety analysis.

This report is the third in a 10-year series examining emerging trends and risks in commercial aviation safety.

All reports and more information on the project can be found at

Technology, operational practices, regulation, and the professionalism of the aviation workforce have helped commercial aviation achieve an extraordinary level of safety. Pilots, air traffic controllers, mechanics, dispatchers, inspectors, certifiers, and others in the workforce are an integral, mea...

10/23/2026

"Products matter. People matter longer. Mentoring, hiring, and helping others grow has become one of the most rewarding parts of my career. "
Tamara Leeks (BSAAE '91, MSAAE '93, PhD AAE '97) talked today about her career "flight plan" as a graduating senior in comparison to the path she actually flew — which came to include the Boeing X32 and Microsoft's Xbox. Now, as a principal software engineering lead on Microsoft Windows, her organization delivers critical updates to ~1.5 billion devices worldwide every month.

10/23/2026

Congratulations to AAE Purdue Alumna Emily Petersen (MSAAE '19) for being named a 38 by 38 Honoree!

Petersen is senior manager for Northrop Grumman, leading work for the Resiliency Technology & Products Operating Unit. Her roles have also included business development lead for the Office of Chief Technologist, where she impacted pursuits involving AI, optics, advanced materials, cybersecurity, and more. During her time with Northrop Grumman, Petersen has overseen a team of 20+ engineers, technicians, and planners, supporting multi-disciplinary R&D customers for space and air sectors.

Petersen will be formally honored alongside other honorees at a reception on October 29.

Help recognize exceptional alumni by submitting a nomination for next year’s honorees.

More information here: https://buff.ly/QA9zvy9

10/17/2026

Congratulations to AAE Purdue Alumna Allissa Noffke (BSAAE '11) for being named a 38 by 38 Honoree!

Known as the “Professor of Spacewalking,” Noffke works directly with the Human Spaceflight Operations team at NASA, where she leads on-orbit operations for activities at the International Space Station. In training astronauts for their first steps out in space, Noffke is helping to support NASA in making an eventual return and landing on the moon.

Noffke will be formally honored alongside other honorees at a reception on October 29.

Help recognize exceptional alumni by submitting a nomination for next year’s honorees.

More information here: https://buff.ly/QA9zvy9

10/16/2026

Tom Feldman (BSAAE '11, MSAAE '13), co-founder and CTO at Stoke Space, visited Purdue today and talked about the development work that went into their reusable rocket design. He also shared how he and his co-founder worked tirelessly to turn an idea into a serious company. In just 7 years, Stoke Space has grown to more than 400 employees, with vertically integrated test facilities and their own launchpad.

10/16/2026

Congratulations to AAE Professor James Garrison for being named a Global Fellow through Technische Universität Wien's (TUW) Global Fellowship Program!

As a pioneer of Global Navigation Satellite System Reflectometry (GNSS-R), Garrison's work has since been generalized into a broader technique known as "signals of opportunity," using nearly any emitted signals that interact with the natural environment to gather data. At TUW this fall, Garrison is teaching a course on GNSS-R methods and working closely with TUW colleagues from the Department of Geodesy and Geoinformation to develop a stronger understanding of using physics-informed machine learning to constrain the retrieval of geophysical parameters.

Read more here: https://buff.ly/VUgt0Pw

10/15/2026

Olivia DeScipio, a junior in AAE, first arrived at Purdue from her small high school feeling isolated and intimidated. It didn't take her long, though, to find community and success in Purdue Engineering Student Council (PESC), which she joined in the first semester of her freshman year. Now, after being named a Brooke Owens fellow in spring 2026, her career in human spaceflight is looking brighter than ever.

Read more: https://buff.ly/4JZYePB

10/14/2026

🎥 A message from the Purdue 1 crew to Indiana fifth graders!

Purdue alum Jason Williamson will fly aboard Purdue 1, Purdue’s all-Boilermaker suborbital research spaceflight — and he wants to hear from Hoosier fifth graders.

Through the Purdue 1 Indiana Essay Competition, fifth graders are invited to write about how they could use a favorite school subject, hobby or skill to help a space mission crew succeed. One winner from each of Indiana's 92 counties will receive a personalized Purdue 1 mission patch, and if mission conditions permit, winners' names will fly with the crew.

Teachers and parents: Share this video with a fifth grader you know! Essays are due Nov. 30: https://bit.ly/purdue-1-essay

10/14/2026

Laser communications to the Moon! Sarah Tedder (BSAAE ’04), a researcher in optical communications at NASA's Glenn Research Center, gave a presentation to graduating seniors on her optical communications work for the Artemis II mission to the Moon.

She helped design, install, and operate one of the three laser modems on Earth that received science data as Orion traveled more than 250,000 miles away. Thanks to her work, the mission was able to transmit stream video at up to 280 Mbps — fast enough for video in 4K quality.