New Langley Professor Named at National Institute of Aerospace

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Feb 24, 2015, 03:28 ET

HAMPTON, Va., Feb. 24, 2015 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The National Institute of Aerospace (NIA) has a new Langley Distinguished Professor in Advanced Aerospace Systems Architecture for the Georgia Institute of Technology.

He is Dr. Dimitri Mavris, director of the Georgia Tech School of Aerospace Engineering's Aerospace Systems Design Lab (ASDL). Mavris replaces his former colleague, Dr. Alan Wilhite, who retired after serving 10 years.

"It is a great honor – and an even greater opportunity – to assume the Langley Distinguished Professorship," said Mavris, who also serves as Georgia Tech's Boeing Professor for Advanced Aerospace Systems Analysis. "We are at a time in history when the potential for collaboration between NASA, the academic community and the private sector shows incredible promise. I look forward to moving that process along."

The National Institute of Aerospace is a non-profit research and graduate institute, located near NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. It was created to support Langley's mission to do cutting-edge aerospace and atmospheric research, develop new technologies and help train the next generation of scientists and engineers. NASA Langley also helps contribute to the funding for the Langley professorships.

"I am very excited that someone of Dr. Mavris' stature and vision will be joining the NIA to perform transformational aerospace research," said Dr. Douglas O. Stanley, president and executive director of the NIA. "I look forward to working closely with him as we create ASDL@NIA to lead the development of innovative aerospace concepts and design methods."

Mavris will split his time between Atlanta and Hampton, where he will be the principal Georgia Tech faculty member resident at NIA. He will lead NIA's research program in the field of systems analysis, with primary emphasis on developing life-cycle systems analysis and risk methodologies for advanced aerospace system architectures.

The professor earned his undergraduate, masters, and doctoral degrees in aerospace engineering from Georgia Tech. His research has focused on the formulation, development and implementation of comprehensive approaches to the design of affordable high-quality complex systems using visual analytics.

Under Mavris' direction, the ASDL has served as a hub of multi-disciplinary system design and analysis work for a number of government and industry sponsors. Over the last 10 years, the lab has done $125 million worth of research in new methods and tools and employed more than 200 research faculty, masters, and doctoral students.

Mavris now joins five other Langley Professors, each of whom holds a teaching and research faculty appointment at one of six NIA founding member universities. They will work as an integrated team with the NIA and NASA Langley research community, and the NIA liaison professors at the six NIA founding universities.

Also joining the team will be Georgia Tech's Dr. Brian German as the new Langley Associate Professor and Dr. Daniel P. Schrage returning as the Georgia Tech Liaison Professor.

NIA was formed by a consortium of universities and the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Foundation. The roster of major research universities includes consortium members: Georgia Tech in Atlanta; Hampton University in Hampton; North Carolina A&T State University, Greensboro; North Carolina State University in Raleigh; University of Maryland, College Park; University of Virginia in Charlottesville; Virginia Tech in Blacksburg; and affiliate members Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, and the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia.

For more information about NASA Langley, please go to:
http://www.nasa.gov/langley

For more information about the National Institute of Aerospace, please visit:
www.nianet.org

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SOURCE NASA