Dimitri Mavris

Dimitri Mavris

Dimitri Mavris

Regents' Professor
Boeing Professor of Advanced Aerospace Systems Analysis
Director, Aerospace Systems Design Laboratory

Dimitri Mavris is a Regents’ Professor, Boeing Professor of Advanced Aerospace Systems Analysis, and an S.P. Langley Distinguished Professor. He also serves as the director of the Aerospace Systems Design Laboratory (ASDL) and executive director of the Professional Master’s in Applied Systems Engineering (PMASE). Dr. Mavris received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. in aerospace engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology. His primary areas of research interest include: advanced design methods, aircraft conceptual and preliminary design, air-breathing propulsion design, multi-disciplinary analysis, design and optimization, system of systems, and non-deterministic design theory. Dr. Mavris has actively pursued closer ties between the academic and industrial communities in order to foster research opportunities and tailor the aerospace engineering curriculum towards meeting the future needs of the US aerospace industry. He has also co-authored with his students in excess of 1,000 publications. During his tenure at Georgia Tech, Dr. Mavris has chaired and served in several Technical and Program Committees for the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) and served on the AIAA Board of Directors and Institute Development Committee. He is the President of the International Council of the Aeronautical Sciences (ICAS). He is the Georgia Tech technical point of contact for the FAA Center of Excellence for Alternative Jet Fuels & Environment (ASCENT), the Georgia Tech site director for the FAA Partnership to Enhance General Aviation Safety, Accessibility, and Sustainability (PEGASAS), and the principal investigator for the Airbus/Georgia Tech Center for MBSE-enabled Overall Aircraft Design and the Siemens Center of Excellence for Simulation and Digital Twin.

dimitri.mavris@aerospace.gatech.edu

(404) 894-1557

Website

  • http://www.ae.gatech.edu/community/staff/bio/mavris-d
  • Research Focus Areas:
    • Algorithms & Optimizations
    • Delivery & Storage
    • Policy & Economics
    • Use & Conservation
    Additional Research:

    System Design & Optimization


    IRI Connections:

    Marilyn Smith

    Marilyn Smith

    Marilyn Smith

    Professor; School of Aerospace Engineering
    Director; Vertical Lift Research Center of Excellence

    Marilyn Smith is a Professor in the School of Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She is director of Georgia Tech's Vertical Lift Research Center of Excellence (VLRCOE), where she leads a seven-university team of experts in vertical lift research for the U.S. Army, U.S. Navy and NASA. She has partnered with the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) to successfully win multiple research funding mechanisms for both organizations that total more than $200 million dollars. As the director of the AE School's Computational Nonlinear Computational Aeroelasticity Lab, Prof. Smith leads an internationally recognized and award-winning research team in the areas of unsteady aerodynamics and computational aeroelasticity using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) across rotary-wing, fixed wing and launch vehicles, as well as sustainable energy. As a member of the NASA FUN3D development team, Prof. Smith contributes to state-of-the-art unstructured algorithm development, in particular for overset, moving frames. As an affiliate of the Aerospace Systems Design Lab (ASDL), she helps to integrate high performance computing with the design process. Prof. Smith is the author or co-author of more than 200 technical publications, and her research products are in active use by the US Government and other organizations, including the Drone Racing League. She is active internationally on three NATO AVT Panels investigating nonlinear gusts behaviors on UAVs and collaboration of experimental/computational aerodynamics. She is on Board of Directors of the Vertical Lift Consortium (VLC) and the Vertical Flight Society (VFS). She is also the Deputy Technical Director for Aeromechanics for the VFS. Prof. Smith has demonstrated her leadership as ARO Dynamic Stall Workshop Chair (2019); 70th AHS Annual Forum Technical Chairperson (2014); 69th AHS Annual Forum Technical Deputy Chairperson (2013); and 2014 Overset Grid Symposium (OGS) Chairperson. She was a member on the first International Aeroelastic Prediction Workshop Organizing Committee and is a member of the OGS organizing committee. Prof. Smith has been a guest expert in aviation for National Geographic, PBS, and NPR, as well as local television and numerous publications.

    marilyn.smith@ae.gatech.edu

    404.894.3065

    Office Location:
    Weber 202

    AE Profile Page

  • Vertical Lift Research Center of Excellence
  • Google Scholar

    Research Focus Areas:
    • Autonomy
    • Wind
    Additional Research:

    aeroelasticity; aerodynamics; computational fluid dynamics


    IRI Connections:

    Vigor Yang

    Vigor Yang

    Vigor Yang

    Regents Professor

    Vigor Yang earned his Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology in 1984. After serving for one year as a research fellow in Jet Propulsion at Caltech, he joined the Pennsylvania State University in August 1985, becoming the John L. and Genevieve H. McCain Chair in Engineering in 2006. In 2009, he began his tenure as the William R.T. Oakes Professor Chair at the Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering at the Georgia Tech. He retired from the chair position and returned to teaching and research in August of 2018

    Yang’s research encompasses a wide spectrum of topics, including (1) data-enabled design and data science; (2) combustion dynamics in propulsion and power-generation systems;(3) multi-fidelity modeling and simulations of fluid flows and combustion; (4) combustion of energetic materials; (5) high-pressure transport phenomena, thermodynamics and combustion, and (6) nano technologies for propulsion and energetic applications. He has established, as the principal or co-principal investigator, more than 70 research projects, including nine (9) DoD-MURI projects. He has published 10 comprehensive volumes and numerous technical papers on combustion, propulsion, energetics, and data science. He was the recipient of  the Air-Breathing Propulsion Award (2005), the Pendray Aerospace Literature Award (2008), the Propellants and Combustion Award (2009), and the von Karman Lectureship in Astronautics Award (2016) from the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA); the Worcester Reed Warner Medal (2014) from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME); and the Lifetime Achievement Award (2014) from the Joint Army, Navy, NASA, and Air Force (JANNAF) Interagency Propulsion Committee.

    Yang was the editor-in-chief of the AIAA Journal of Propulsion and Power (2001-2009) and the JANNAF Journal of Propulsion and Energetics (2009-2012). He is currently a co-editor of the Aerospace Book Series of the Cambridge University Press (2010-).  He serves, or has served, on a large number of steering committees and review/advisory boards for government agencies and universities in the U.S. and abroad. A member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering and an academician of Academia Sinica, Dr. Yang is a fellow of the AIAA, ASME, and Royal Aeronautical Society (RAeS).

    vigor.yang@aerospace.gatech.edu

    Departmental Bio

  • Website
  • Research Focus Areas:
    • Combustion
    • Energy
    • Hydrogen
    • Hydrogen Production
    • Hydrogen Utilization
    • Materials for Energy
    • Nanomaterials
    Additional Research:
    Hydrogen Production, Hydrogen Utilization, data-enabled design, data science, combustion dynamics in propulsion and power-generation systems, multi-fidelity modeling and simulations of fluid flows and combustion, combustion of energetic materials, high-pressure transport phenomena, thermodynamics and combustion, nanotechnologies for propulsion and energetic applications

    IRI Connections:

    Lu Gan

    Lu Gan

    Lu Gan

    Assistant Professor - School of Aerospace Engineering

    Lu Gan joined the Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology as an Assistant Professor in January 2024. She leads the Lu's Navigation and Autonomous Robotics (Lunar) Lab at Georgia Tech, and is on the core faculty of the Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines. Her research interests include robot perception, robot learning, and autonomous navigation. Her group explores the use of computer vision, machine learning, estimation, probabilistic inference, kinematics and dynamics to develop autonomous systems in ground, air, and space applications.

    She holds a B.S. in Automation from the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, an M.S. in Control Engineering from Beihang University, and received her M.S. and Ph.D. in Robotics from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Before joining Georgia Tech, she had a two-year appointment as a Postdoctoral Scholar at the Graduate Aerospace Laboratories of the California Institute of Technology and the Center for Autonomous Systems and Technologies at Caltech.

    lgan@gatech.edu

    Office Location:
    Guggenheim 448A

    Lunar Lab @ GT

  • AE Profile Page
  • Personal Website
  • Google Scholar

    Research Focus Areas:
    • Aerospace
    • Autonomy
    • Machine Learning
    • Robotics
    Additional Research:

    Computer VisionPerception & NavigationRobot AutonomyFlight Mechanics & ControlsHuman-Robot Interaction


    IRI Connections:

    Elizabeth Qian

    Elizabeth Qian

    Elizabeth Qian

    Assistant Professor

    Elizabeth Qian joined the Daniel Guggenheim School in November 2022. She holds a joint appointment at Georgia Tech as Assistant Professor in the Schools of Aerospace Engineering and Computational Science and Engineering. Her interdisciplinary research develops new computational methods to enable engineering design and decision-making for complex systems. Her specialties are in developing efficient surrogate models through model reduction and scientific machine learning, and in developing multifidelity approaches to accelerate expensive computations in uncertainty quantification, optimization, and control. 

    Elizabeth previously held a postdoctoral appointment as von Karman Instructor at Caltech in the Department of Computing + Mathematical Sciences. She has been the recipient of many awards, including a Caltech-wide award for teaching bestowed by the undergraduate student body, the 2020 SIAM Student Paper Prize, the Fannie and John Hertz Foundation Fellowship, and the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. She is also an alumna of the U.S. Fulbright student program. She earned her PhD, SM, and SB degrees from the MIT Department of Aeronautics & Astronautics.

    elizabeth.qian@aerospace.gatech.edu

    Website

  • AE Profile
    Additional Research:
    Flight Mechanics & Controls Propulsion & Combustion Systems Design & OptimizationLarge-Scale Computations, Data, and Analytics

    IRI Connections:
    IRI And Role

    Christos E. Athanasiou

    Christos E. Athanasiou

    Christos Athanasiou

    Assistant Professor

    Christos Athanasiou is an Assistant Professor at Georgia Tech's Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering, leading the Daedalus Lab. The lab's mission is to advance science and technology in biological and man-made systems for tackling grand social and environmental challenges with a major focus on energy storage, environmental remediation, and sustainable space exploration. Christos holds a Ph.D. in Photonics from EPFL. Initially, he carried out postdoctoral research at Brown University's School of Engineering, and later jointly at Brown University and MIT Media Lab.

    athanasiou@gatech.edu

    Christos E Athanasiou Profile

    Research Focus Areas:
    • Aerospace
    Additional Research:
    Disciplines:Structural Mechanics & MaterialsAE Multidisciplinary Research Areas:Large-Scale Computations, Data, and AnalyticsMechanics of Multifunctional Structures and MaterialsSpace Exploration and Earth MonitoringSustainable Transportation and Energy Systems

    IRI Connections:

    Mitchell Walker II

    Mitchell Walker II

    Mitchell Walker II

    Professor
    Associate Chair for Graduate Studies

    Dr. Walker's primary research interests lie in electric propulsion, plasma physics, and hypersonic aerodynamics/plasma interaction. He has extensive design and testing experience with Hall thrusters and ion engines. Dr. Walker has performed seminal work in Hall thruster clustering, vacuum chamber facility effects, plasma-material interactions, and electron emission from carbon nanotubes. His current research activities involve both theoretical and experimental work in advanced spacecraft propulsion systems, diagnostics (including THz time-domain spectroscopy and Thomson scattering), plasma physics, helicon plasma sources, magnetoplasmadynamic thrusters, and pulsed inductive thrusters. Dr. Walker also teaches the undergraduate Jet & Rocket Propulsion course, as well as the graduate level Rocket Propulsion, Electric Propulsion, and Gasdynamics courses.

    mitchell.walker@ae.gatech.edu

    404-385-2757

    Office Location:
    Tech Tower 307

    Website

    Research Focus Areas:
    • Energy Generation, Storage, and Distribution
    • Energy Harvesting
    • Thermal Systems
    Additional Research:
    Energy Harvesting; Thermal Systems

    IRI Connections:

    Koki Ho

    Koki Ho

    Koki Ho

    Dutton-Ducoffe Professor
    Associate Professor

    Dr. Koki Ho is the Dutton-Ducoffe Professor, an Associate Professor, and the director of the Space Systems Optimization Group in the Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering at Georgia Tech. His research focuses on developing modeling and optimization methods for rigorous space mission analysis and design. Some of his specific research interests include (1) network modeling for campaign-level space mission design; (2) optimization and probabilistic modeling for in-space logistics infrastructure design and operations; (3) design, deployment, and maintenance of mega-scale satellite constellations; and (4) sensor management for space domain awareness. His unique research connecting logistics-based modeling, optimization, systems engineering, and space applications has provided a substantial impact on modern and future space missions that involve multiple missions, multiple vehicles, and reusable infrastructure elements. Dr. Ho earned his Ph.D. at MIT and his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the University of Tokyo. He is the recipient of the NSF CAREER Award (2020), the NASA Early Career Faculty Award (2019), the DARPA Young Faculty Award (2019), and the Luigi Napolitano Award (2015), and he is a co-author of one of the most downloaded Acta Astronautica articles. Dr. Ho served as the Chair of the AIAA Space Logistics Technical Committee in 2017-2024 and currently serves on the Steering Committee for the NASA-funded Consortium for Space Mobility and In-Space Servicing, Assembly, and Manufacturing Capabilities (COSMIC).

    kokiho@gatech.edu

    404.894.3078

    Office Location:
    CODA E1052B

    Lab Website

    Google Scholar

    Additional Research:
    • Space Logistics 
    • Space Systems
    • Systems Design & Optimization

    IRI Connections:
    IRI And Role

    Yongxin Chen

    Yongxin  Chen

    Yongxin Chen

    Assistant Professor; School of Aerospace Engineering

    Yongxin Chen was born in Ganzhou, Jiangxi, China. He received his BSc in Mechanical Engineering from Shanghai Jiao Tong university, China, in 2011, and a Ph.D. degree in Mechanical Engineering, under the supervision of Tryphon Georgiou, from University of Minnesota in 2016. He is currently an Assistant Professor in the School of Aerospace Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology. Before joining Georgia Tech, he had a one-year Research Fellowship in the Department of Medical Physics at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center with Allen Tannenbaum from 2016.8 to 2017.8 and was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Iowa State University from 2017.8 to 2018.8. He received the George S. Axelby Best Paper Award (IEEE Transaction on Automatic Control) in 2017 for his joint work "Optimal steering of a linear stochastic system to a final probability distribution, Part I" with Tryphon Georgiou and Michele Pavon.

    yongchen@gatech.edu

    404.894.2765

    Office Location:
    Guggenheim 448B

    Personal Page

    Google Scholar

    Research Focus Areas:
    • Autonomy
    Additional Research:

    control theory; optimal mass transport; machine learning; robotics; optimization


    IRI Connections:
    IRI And Role

    Panagiotis Tsiotras

    Panagiotis  Tsiotras

    Panagiotis Tsiotras

    Professor & David and Andrew Lewis Chair; School of Aerospace Engineering
    Associate Director, Institute for Robotics & Intelligent Machines

    Dr. Tsiotras holds the David & Andrew Lewis Endowed Chair in the School of Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering at Georgia Tech. He is also associate director at the Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines. His current research interests include nonlinear and optimal control and their connections with AI, planning, and decision-making, emphasizing autonomous ground, aerial, and space vehicles applications. He has published more than 350 journal and conference articles in these areas. Prior to joining the faculty at Georgia Tech, Dr. Tsiotras was an assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the University of Virginia. He has also held visiting appointments with the MIT, JPL, INRIA, Rocquencourt, the Laboratoire de Automatique de Grenoble, and the Ecole des Mines de Paris (Mines ParisTech). Dr. Tsiotras is a recipient of the NSF CAREER award, the IEEE Technical Excellence Award in Aerospace Controls, the Outstanding Aerospace Engineer Award from Purdue, the Sigma Xi President and Visitor's Award for Excellence in Research, as well as numerous other fellowships and scholarships. He is currently the chief editor of the Frontiers in Robotics & AI, in the area of space robotics, and an associate editor for the Dynamic Games and Applications journal. In the past, he has served as an associate editor for the IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, the AIAA Journal of Guidance, Control, and Dynamics, the IEEE Control Systems Magazine, and the Journal of Dynamical and Control Systems. He is a Fellow of the AIAA, IEEE, and AAS.

    tsiotras@gatech.edu

    404.894.9526

    Office Location:
    Knight 415C

    AE Page

    Google Scholar

    Research Focus Areas:
    • Autonomy
    Additional Research:

    controls; robotics; artificial intelligence; flying robots; spacecraft


    IRI Connections: