麻豆影院

Skip to main content

Smead Aerospace recognizes 2025 alumni award honorees

Smead Aerospace recognizes 2025 alumni award honorees

The Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences is honoring eight alumni for outstanding contributions to industry, for technical achievement, and public service.听

The 2025 AeroBuffs Club Alumni Academy inductees are being recognized for work in business, civil, and military aerospace spheres.

鈥淥ur outstanding graduates from Smead Aerospace are both established leaders and rising stars across aerospace engineering science," said Hanspeter Schaub, professor and chair of Smead Aerospace. "We're excited to recognize these individuals for their achievements and what they've given to our industry as a whole. They're solving big challenges and pushing the limits of what is possible in aerospace engineering sciences."

Honorees are being recognized in three categories:

Outstanding Alumni for Excellence in Commercial Enterprise

Under 40

  • Sarah Gillis (AeroEngr BS鈥17) - An astronaut and Senior Space Operations Engineer at SpaceX, Gillis has played a key role in creating SpaceX鈥檚 astronaut training program and flew aboard the Inspiration4 Polaris Dawn, which took humans farther from Earth than any mission since the Apollo program.

Over 40

  • Zach Hazen (AeroEngr BS鈥07) 鈥 Hazen is a leader in the UAS industry, having sized, configured, and provided detailed aerodynamic designs for 10 different aircraft achieving first flight. He also directed the development of five operational aircraft serving both commercial and defense sectors.
  • Maciej Stachura (AeroEngr MS鈥10, PhD鈥14) 鈥撎As the co-founder and CTO of Black Swift Technologies, Stachura has built a career developing uncrewed aircraft systems for extreme environments, including wildland fires, volcanoes, tornadoes, and hurricanes.

Outstanding Alumni for Excellence in Public Service

Over 40

  • Michael R. Dickey (AeroEngr BS鈥87, MS鈥88) 鈥 Dickey co-founded Elara Nova, a global space consultancy, and is a career aerospace leader with two stints in public service, including as an Air Force officer and at the civilian senior executive level supporting the stand-up of the United States Space Force.
  • Bruce Haines (AeroEngr BS鈥86, MS鈥87, PhD鈥91) 鈥 A principle research technologist at NASA JPL, Haines is a leader in the fields of precise orbit determination and calibration/validation of satellite radar altimetry, with over 250 published research papers.
  • David B. Spencer (AeroEngr PhD鈥94) 鈥撎Across a long career in education and research, Spencer has made major contributions to space flight dynamics, trajectory optimization, and orbital debris research. He is the lead author of the Interplanetary Astrodynamics textbook and has served in key roles in multiple industry associations.

Outstanding Alumni for Excellence in Technical Achievement and Leadership

Under 40

  • 脕lvaro Romero-Calvo (AeroEngr PhD鈥22) 鈥撎A professor at Georgia Tech, Romero-Calvo鈥檚 fundamental and applied engineering research is developing space technologies for reduced-gravity environments and advancing the fundamental understanding of their underlying physical principles.

Over 40

  • David Wiese (AeroEngr MS鈥07, PhD鈥11) 鈥 As a space geodesist at NASA JPL, Wiese has played key roles in multiple remote sensing missions, including GRACE and ICESat-2. He has conducted authoritative research into the changing state of Earth鈥檚 hydrosphere and his papers have been cited over 11,000 times.

All of the honorees will be officially recognized at the 2025 AeroBuffs Club alumni banquet and awards ceremony on April 18.听Registrations are still being accepted for CU 麻豆影院 aerospace alumni who would like to attend.