[Staff] AE Department Chair

[Monte Mehrabadi]

To AE Faculty and Staff:

I am pleased to inform you that Dr. Ping Lu will be joining the Department
as Professor and Chair of Aerospace Engineering effective July 27, 2016.

Dr. Lu has been a Professor of Aerospace Engineering at Iowa State
University since 2003.  He earned his Bachelor of Science degree
in Aerospace Engineering from Beijing Institute of Aeronautics in 1982 and
his Masters and his Ph.D. degrees in Aerospace Engineering from University
of Michigan in 1984 and 1988, respectively.

After a post doctoral fellowship in Michigan, he joined the Iowa State
University as Assistant Professor of Aerospace Engineering in 1990 and was
promoted to the rank of Associate Professor in 1995. He is the recipient of
numerous awards including the Young Engineering Faculty Research Award in
1997, AIAA Sustained Service Award in 2006, and Mechanics and Control of
Flights Award in 2008.

Dr. Lu has been the Editor-In-Chief of the* AIAA Journal of Guidance,
Control, and Dynamics* *(JGCD) *since 2013. JGCD is one of the highest
ranked research journals in Aerospace Engineering.  Dr. Lu's research focus
is Computational Guidance and Control. The advanced optimal aerocapture and
advanced guidance algorithms developed by Dr. Lu have been employed in
NASA's Human Mars Mission study and in the Terrestrial Return Vehicle
(TRV), respectively. The TRV is intended for rapid return of experiments
from the International Space Station.

Please join me in welcoming Ping to the AE Department and the the College
of Engineering in July.

I would like to thank the members of the Search Committee and the Search
Committee Chair, John Abraham, for their diligent efforts throughout the
search.

Also, please join me in thanking Allen Plotkin for his valuable service as the
AE Interim Chair while teaching two courses per semester since 2014.  Allen
will continue as the AE Interim Chair until Ping joins the Department on
July 27, 2016.

Thanks,

Monte
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://engineering.sdsu.edu/pipermail/staff/attachments/20160407/6969b5e8/attachment.html>