Penina Axelrad News

Axelrad awarded 2024 Yvonne C. Brill Lectureship in Aerospace Engineering

Anonymous — Thu, 11 Jul 2024 06:00:00 +0000

Axelrad awarded 2024 Yvonne C. Brill Lectureship in Aerospace Engineering Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 07/11/2024 - 00:00

The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) and the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) have announced that Penina Axelrad, distinguished professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, has been selected as the recipient of the 2024 Yvonne C. Brill Lectureship in Aerospace Engineering.

Dr. Axelrad will present her lecture, “The Evolution and Impact of Global Navigation Satellite Systems,” on Tuesday, Oct. 1, at 11 a.m. ET, in conjunction with the NAE Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C. Registration for this lecture is free and open to the public.

Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) provide the basis for smartphones to effectively guide us to our destinations, safe and flexible navigation for tens of thousands of airline flights per day, seamless synchronization of power grids, and precise timing of financial transactions. GNSS also enable scientific observation of Earth’s variable gravity field, soil water content and vegetation, and even Earth’s atmosphere and ocean surface winds.

Dr. Axelrad’s lecture will discuss what we can learn from the remarkable evolution of a military navigation system into a global utility, and will explore where today’s advances in the utilization of signals-of-opportunity, optical communications, atomic clocks, and quantum sensing might lead.

Read full article at AIAA...

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How GPS Changed Everything - April 15

Anonymous — Tue, 04 Apr 2023 17:01:02 +0000

How GPS Changed Everything - April 15 Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 04/04/2023 - 11:01

The Global Positioning System (GPS), fully operational since 1995, has redefined what it means to navigate in the world. GPS receivers serve to guide airplanes, Uber drivers, tractors and satellites. GPS timing synchronizes power grids, telecommunications networks and bank transactions. GPS is also essential in scientific measurements of the motion of ice sheets, variations in Earth’s gravity field, and atmospheric conditions used in numerical weather prediction.

How is it that a system, originally intended to support worldwide military operations, has created such broad-reaching benefits? Professor Penina Axelrad’s CU on the Weekend presentation will describe the “HOW.” That is, how GPS works and how its key technical elements came together with serendipitous parallel developments to have an unprecedented impact on our daily lives and scientific discovery. She will also discuss threats to GPS utility and the evolving landscape of global navigation satellite system capabilities.

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New NASA grant to support quantum sensors in space

Anonymous — Thu, 16 Mar 2023 18:43:36 +0000

New NASA grant to support quantum sensors in space Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 03/16/2023 - 12:43

A multi-university research team, including engineers and physicists from CU Boulder, will build technology and tools to improve measurement of important climate factors by observing atoms in outer space.

The new Quantum Pathways Institute is led by the University of Texas at Austin, and scientists from the University of California, Santa Barbara, California Institute of Technology and the U.S. National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) are also participating. The researchers received $15 million in funding from NASA over five years for the institute.

From left to right, researchers Murray Holland, Catie Ledesma, Kendall Mehling, Liang-Ying and Dana Anderson in a lab at JILA. (Credit: Dana Anderson)

They will focus on the concept of quantum sensing, which involves observing how atoms react to small changes in their environment, and using that to infer the time-variations in the gravity field of the Earth. This will enable scientists to improve how accurately several important climate processes can be measured, such as the sea level rise, the rate of ice melt, the changes in land water resources and ocean heat storage changes.

Dana Anderson, professor of physics and fellow at JILA, a joint research institute between CU Boulder and NIST, leads the CU experimental effort. The Colorado-based team will help develop new quantum sensors drawing on JILA’s decades of experience in “atomic clocks”—devices that measure the incredibly-fast oscillations of atoms cooled down to just a fraction of a degree above absolute zero.

Other CU Boulder researchers on the new effort include Murray Holland, JILA fellow; Penina Axelrad, distinguished professor in the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences; and Marco Nicotra, assistant professor in the Department of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering.

“The collaboration among UT Austin, CU Boulder, UCSB, Caltech and NIST targets the development of very high-performance quantum sensing technology for future space missions,” Holland said. “Work at JILA and elsewhere has demonstrated the potential of these methods for optimizing the design and control of quantum sensors beyond what any human has achieved to date.”

The multi-university group will specifically look at changes in gravitational forces and what that means for climate. As climate shifts—with ice caps melting and sea levels and temperatures changing—that changes gravitational forces around the earth and in outer space. Atoms orbiting the earth react to those gravitational changes. By measuring those reactions, the researchers can give better readings of changes in climate processes.

“This project has brought together an amazing team of individuals,” Nicotra said. “As an engineer with a non-quantum background, I am grateful to my collaborators for introducing me to the field. I am also excited to see how my discipline, control engineering, can impact quantum technology.”

The challenge for the team is two-fold. Parts of these sensing technologies exist today, but a lot of what they are building is new. Add to that the challenge of sending these instruments into orbit.

"You can't have manual maintenance in space—once you send something out, it's out of reach; you cannot see it," said Srinivas Bettadpur of UT Austin who is leading the NASA institute. "You have to put in a great deal of work to make sure the instrument will fly and the technology will function for several years, at least, to enable the discoveries."

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Axelrad leading the way through positioning, navigation and timing

Anonymous — Fri, 05 Mar 2021 16:07:56 +0000

Axelrad leading the way through positioning, navigation and timing Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 03/05/2021 - 09:07

Jeff Zehnder

Penina Axelrad has built her career pushing the boundaries of GPS technology.

As a faculty member in the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences, she has earned accolades from her peers, served in leadership positions, taught hundreds and hundreds of students, been inducted into the National Academy of Engineering, and now has been named a Distinguished Professor by the University of Colorado Board of Regents, the highest honor bestowed on faculty.

“Penny sees things differently than most people, particularly most professors that I know. She can assess a situation and see things that were invisible to most others, and if we compare notes, there is always something for me to learn,” said Brian Argrow, chair of Smead Aerospace. “It is the ability to synthesize facts and ideas into a coherent picture with insights that distinguishes great engineers from good engineers. Penny has honed this ability in teaching and research.”

Growing up, Axelrad excelled in math and science and was accepted to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

She was planning to major in electrical engineering, but struck out when trying to get experience working in one of the EE labs as a freshman.

“The professors basically told me to come back after I’d taken more classes and preferably gotten A’s. A friend in Aero/Astro recommended trying the Space Systems Lab instead, where I totally lucked out and got the chance to learn to build and test circuit boards,” Axelrad said.

She quickly found her place.

As a child, Axelrad had been fascinated by the Apollo program; she completed her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in aeronautical and astronautical engineering at MIT. She then went on to Stanford for a PhD, which she earned in 1991.

Axelrad worked for about two years in industry in the Bay Area, also teaching a class at Stanford, before being hired by CU Boulder. Here, she has advanced technology and algorithms for GPS-based positioning, navigation and timing, multipath characterization and correction, and remote sensing using GNSS-based reflectometry and radio occultation measurements.

“I really enjoy being a professor, all aspects of it. Not just teaching. Not just research,” Axelrad said. “I love collaborating with other faculty and I love working with students. I’ve taught my GPS class 25 times, and every year students come in and ask questions no one has asked before. It’s fun and challenging.”

She has served as an advisor or mentor for dozens of graduate and undergraduate students. Current PhD advisee Shaylah Mutschler said she was drawn to Axelrad by both her research and passion.

“I always come away from our meetings feeling energized and even more inspired and motivated than I did going into the meeting. That’s something really special. I honestly don’t know what more I could ask for from an advisor,” Mutschler said.

In addition to her work as a professor, Axelrad served as chair of the aerospace department from 2012-2017, leading it through an era of significant growth that included its naming after longtime benefactors Harold “Joe” and Ann Smead, and the development of a long-planned, dedicated aerospace building, which was completed in 2019.

In 2019, Axelrad was elected into the National Academy of Engineering, one of the highest honors for engineers, for her work on analysis of multipath GPS signals to improve satellite navigation and new approaches to remote sensing.

Axelrad has authored 62 journal papers, 197 conference papers, and served as principal investigator or co-investigator on research grants and contracts totaling $16 million. She recently joined a new research program on campus, Q-SEnSE: Quantum Systems through Entangled Science and Engineering, an interdisciplinary center for quantum science and technology.

“I am just at the very beginning of getting into this new area. I’m hoping to take what I’ve learned in my work with GPS as a starting point for understanding the role quantum sensors could play in future navigation and space systems,” she said.

She is honored to be recognized by the university.

“I feel lucky to be recognized in this way,” Axelrad said. “It’s really humbling given how many amazing faculty there are here at CU Boulder.”

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New $25-million center to advance quantum science and engineering

Anonymous — Tue, 21 Jul 2020 16:55:41 +0000

New $25-million center to advance quantum science and engineering Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 07/21/2020 - 10:55

Today, the National Science Foundation announced that CU Boulder will receive a $25 million award to launch a new quantum science and engineering research center.

The new center will be led by physicist Jun Ye and is a partnership with 11 other research organizations in the United States and abroad. Together, these pioneers will explore several “grand challenges.” They include how exotic quantum phenomena, such as quantum entanglement, will advance new frontiers in measurement science; how quantum sensing can help researchers to discover new fundamental physics; and how researchers can turn those advancements into real-world technologies.

“Imagine if we can build robust quantum systems that can go outside of our labs, that can completely change how we sense the physical world, how we navigate and how we communicate with each other,” said Ye, a fellow in JILA, a partnership between CU Boulder and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). “We’re asking how we can take advantage of recent advances in quantum physics to actually solve useful problems for society.”

The new center is named Quantum Systems through Entangled Science and Engineering (Q-SEnSE), a nod to its focus on building close ties between scientists and engineers.

“We are proud to partner in this new center, which will address key priorities for NIST and the nation—quantum science, measurement science and advancing U.S. innovation,” said Under Secretary of Commerce for Standards and Technology and NIST Director Walter G. Copan. “NIST and JILA are recognized world leaders in quantum science, and we’re delighted with the strength of the team that has been assembled with Jun Ye as the first director of Q-SEnSE.”

Ye added that the new center, CU Boulder’s third major NSF center, will also focus on educating and training the young people who will become the quantum workforce of the future. CU Boulder has a strong tradition and strength in this area, and is already forming partnerships with schools and community colleges across the Rocky Mountain region to do just that.

Establishing the Q-SEnSE center is the latest step in the university’s campaign to grow Colorado into what Ye calls “the quantum capital of the world.”

“This center is an exciting next step to expand on our CUbit Quantum Initiative, which brings together JILA, Engineering, Sciences, NIST and academic and industry partners in the region,” said Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovation Terri Fiez. “Q-SEnSE will allow us to leverage the full power of our combined quantum capabilities to lead the global quantum revolution.”

Future clocks

The new center emerges, in part, from decades of research by Ye and his students and colleagues on atomic clocks—devices that use networks of strontium atoms to track the passage of time with previously unimaginable accuracy. Such clocks, he added, could also become precise navigational or scientific sensors, capable of detecting even minute shifts in Earth’s gravitational pull.

But the practical application of such technologies has, to date, lagged behind their promise and performance in the lab.

“A major challenge is: How do we engineer these sensitive systems to be robust?” said Ye, also a professor adjoint in the Department of Physics at CU Boulder. “It’s not just about putting them in a box.”

The new NSF center will work toward that goal. Over five years, Ye and his colleagues at CU Boulder and its 11 partner organizations will not only explore the fundamental physics underlying devices like atomic clocks. They’ll also partner with engineers to turn those dynamics into tools that anyone can use.

Forming those new connections among disciplines has also been a key component of CU Boulder’s CUbit Quantum Initiative, launched in 2019.

“A challenge as big as quantum requires collaboration between many types of scientists and engineers. This type of collaboration requires a catalyzing event,” said Greg Rieker, an associate professor in the Paul M. Rady Department of Mechanical Engineering and a co-principal investigator of Q-SEnSE. “This grant is the event that we needed.”

Ye added that the center isn’t just a Colorado initiative—solving these global challenges will take leaders from across the globe.

“This center will have a national impact because it takes national leaders to solve these grand challenges together,” Ye said. “We feel really fortunate to have great people from both coasts and up and down the Rocky Mountains on our team.”

International partnership

The new center will include researchers from Harvard University, MIT, Stanford University, University of Delaware, University of Oregon, University of New Mexico and the University of Innsbruck in Austria. Several government labs, including NIST, Los Alamos National Laboratory, MIT Lincoln Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratory, will play major roles in the initiative.

Other CU Boulder and JILA investigators in the center include Svenja Knappe, Dana Anderson, Penina Axelrad, Juliet Gopinath, Murray Holland, Shu-Wei Huang, Adam Kaufman, Konrad Lehnert, Heather Lewandowski, Claire Monteleoni, Cindy Regal, Ana Maria Rey and James Thompson.

“Quantum information science has the potential to change the world. But to realize that potential, we must first answer some fundamental research questions,” said Dr. Sethuraman Panchanathan, NSF Director. “Through the Quantum Leap Challenge Institutes, NSF is making targeted investments. Within five years, we are confident these institutes can make tangible advances to help carry us into a true quantum revolution.”

“Quantum sensors that measure everything from light to gravity’s effects have the potential to bring us more precise measurements than we’ve ever been able to capture, but we have not yet come close to even glimpsing realizing those full possibilities,” said NSF Program Director Dominique Dagenais. "This center will take on the challenging work of realizing implementing the potential of quantum sensing, taking our ideas and translating them into new research findings and technologies.”

"We are excited to participate in this Quantum Leap Challenge Institute, which will advance scientific, technological educational and industrial foundations for quantum sensors, measurements and networks,” said Mark Kasevich, professor of physics and applied physics at Stanford.

“The Quantum Leap Challenge Institute is a fantastic possibility to really bring a wide range of ideas and abilities to an impactful point,” said Susanne Yelin, professor in residence at Harvard University. “I personally am very excited by the prospect to strongly collaborate with so many experiments and other theorists.”

"It is exciting to once again be involved with our long-time collaborators at JILA, especially because we are now focused on using some of the tools developed at JILA and the Center for Ultracold Atoms to take the next step in quantum precision measurement,” said John Doyle, professor of physics at Harvard.

"Q-SEnSE will tackle the goals of the National Quantum Initiative head on: addressing basic research in Quantum Information Science (QIS), expanding the number of researchers, educators and students with training in QIS and promoting the development and inclusion of multidisciplinary curriculum and research opportunities for QIS at the undergraduate, graduate and postdoctoral level,” said Ivan Deutsch, director of the Center for Quantum Information and Control at the University of New Mexico.

“Quantum technologies are likely to provide significant breakthroughs in areas such as new sensors, precision timekeeping, fundamental new discoveries through precision measurements and possibly quantum computing,” said Vladan Vuletic, professor of physics at MIT. “There is now a worldwide race between Europe, Asia and the U.S. to develop and apply quantum technologies, and the new institute will train a significant number of students in this emerging area.”

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Aerospace America: Tracking cubesats at CU Boulder

Anonymous — Sun, 03 May 2020 06:00:00 +0000

Aerospace America: Tracking cubesats at CU Boulder Anonymous (not verified) Sun, 05/03/2020 - 00:00

Students love their cubesats, except maybe when they lose contact with one in the first days after launch because the team hasn’t yet nailed down its orbital track. Cubesats are often reacquired, but not without frayed nerves and lost experiment time. Amanda Miller spoke to researchers who think they can keep cubesat operators locked onto their satellites from the start.

The first passes overhead by the Miniature X-ray Solar Spectrometer 2 cubesat were exhilarating to the students who built it. At each anticipated crossing time, a small crowd of students, professors and staff gathered around computers at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado in Boulder. Signals raced from LASP’s ground station toward the estimated track of MinXSS-2. The signals hit their mark and triggered MinXSS-2 to confirm that it was listening and to send a report about its well-being, including its temperature, position relative to the sun, and the performance of its solar panels, battery and science instrument.

Several ham radio operators in the U.S. and Japan were pulling in the information, too, aiding the students to predict the timing and path of MinXSS-2’s orbit.

Then came the letdown. On one pass, no reply came back. That’s not unusual, but soon it happened again. Matters turned tense. “You spent five years to build it, and not being able to talk to it is very excruciating,” says Scott Palo, CU Boulder professor of aerospace engineering sciences and one of MinXSS-2’s investigators.

If an equipment failure on the satellite were to blame, the spacecraft’s mission to chronicle the X-ray intensities of solar flares might be over before much useful data was collected.

As it turned out, the culprit was a frustrating side effect of the most affordable way to get a cubesat into orbit. MinXSS-2 was dispensed from its launch vehicle with dozens of other cubesats, which meant that on its initial passes, the signal beam projected from LASP covered all or many of the satellites in this cluster. But as the satellites drifted apart due to atmospheric drag and differences in their masses, the job of estimating when and where to direct the signal became more challenging. At this point, MinXSS-2 was not yet in the catalog of satellite tracks published by the U.S. Air Force by parsing radar detections (a job now done by the U.S. Space Force). MinXSS-2’s operators scrambled during each eight-minute pass to figure out if they were missing the return signal perhaps by incorrectly anticipating the Doppler shift in the cubesat’s radio frequency caused by the satellite’s motion relative to LASP. “You’re sitting there turning a bunch of knobs trying to dial it in,” says Palo, making a figurative reference to the process that’s actually commanded by software.

Enter Palo’s colleagues at the university’s Colorado Center for Astrodynamics Research. They have come up with a technique that could someday relieve cubesat operators from the prospect of temporarily losing contact with their satellites during the harrowing first weeks in orbit.

The problem

Our story starts in 2015, when then-doctoral candidate John Gaebler decided to take up the challenge of ending sagas like the one experienced by the MinXSS-2 team. He’d witnessed the advent of clustered deployments in his years as a flight dynamicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, before he began his Ph.D. work. Even then, “I couldn’t envision that they would launch 100 cubesats in five minutes,” he says.

Gaebler won a research grant from FAA, which, at the time, had been tasked with figuring out how to regulate space traffic.

His plan was to write software algorithms that would sort radar measurements gathered by the Air Force before the service converted them to tracks of known and unknown objects in its Satellite Catalog. This would be done through a filtering process called finite set statistics.

If the approach worked, he could produce reliable tracks, comparable to the military’s, within a few days rather than the weeks it can take clustered satellites to show up in the catalog published on websites including CelesTrak.com and Space-Track.org.

By simulating a real deployment, he could create his own sets of simulated radar measurements to test the process, since he did not have that data from the Air Force. Gaebler’s project was no slight against the U.S. military’s space trackers. “What’s hard about it is cubesats are small. They have a low radar cross-section,” as Penny Axelrad, the project’s faculty adviser, explained during a public lecture last year.

When first dispensed, cubesats can be separated by as little as 5 meters, and Space Force trackers at first can’t sort out which radar measurements, such as the range, azimuth or direction of travel, and elevation, represent one orbit.

“Not only does it take [the military] a long time to find the cubesats, once they find them, they don’t necessarily know whose is whose,” Axelrad said.

Indeed, the Satellite Catalog lists unidentified satellites with a number. Once operators receive a signal confirming that one of these unidentified satellites is theirs, they report that to the Space Force’s 18th Space Control Squadron, which adds the identity to the catalog.

Back when just a cubesat or two reached space by riding along with bigger payloads, estimating the orbits according to the radar findings was “fairly obvious,” says Gaebler, who completed his doctorate this year. “What was plenty good enough before now isn’t so good.”

Building a simulation

To test his plan for quickly sorting radar measurements into satellite tracks, Gaebler first built a simulation of the 2017 deployment of 104 satellites from an Indian Space and Research Organization Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle rocket.

Plugging the cataloged radar tracks into NASA’s open-source General Mission Analysis Tool showed him how the orbits spread apart over time. Next, he picked four of the military’s radar sites around the world, and within the GMAT software he generated simulated measurements — range, azimuth and elevation — as though the satellites were being observed from those sites.

The 2017 launch afforded the added benefit that one company, Planet Labs of San Francisco (now simply Planet), owned 88 of the satellites. The company provided Gaebler with the only other information cubesat operators often have to go by upfront: prelaunch predictions of the satellites’ positions.

“Now my simulation was that much more realistic,” Gaebler says.

Running the algorithms

He went to work on the simulated radar measurements, before any had been matched as belonging to the same satellite.

After next defining the far outside limits of possible tracks for any satellite from the deployment of 104, he wrote algorithms to quickly pair up all the measurements one by one, calculating rough tracks and rejecting any combinations that exceeded his constraints.

To save time, Gaebler combined fewer data points at this stage than if he’d been trying to calculate precise tracks.

Once he’d narrowed down millions of possible measurement combinations into matches that could make realistic tracks, the algorithms set about doing the slower, more complex calculations of figuring precise orbits.

“Not only does it take [the military] a long time to find the cubesats, once they find them, they don’t necessarily know whose is whose.”
Penny Axelrad, University of Colorado in Boulder

The process proved he could sort out the orbits of the 104 clustered cubesats “within days” with an uncertainty of about 50 meters.

Gaebler is continuing the research as a postdoctoral student, working on a proposal for an Air Force grant to figure out how few measurements he could get away with and still have the method work.

New data

Gaebler thinks radar might not be the only source of helpful information.

As the algorithm work progressed, Gaebler and Axelrad had a brainstorm when they recalled to each other how they had pored over the grainy black-and-white video taken from the launch vehicle as the 104 cubesats were dispensed, hoping for clues about the cubesat tracks.

One of the issues with cubesats is that they’re dispensed by spring from their carriers. “There’s a little bit of variability in how much oomph [each cubesat] goes out with,” Gaebler explains. Accounting for that variability could make estimating the tracks more precise.

A more sophisticated camera system would be needed, one that measures the velocity of the departing cubesats.

Ten students in a yearlong senior design class mocked up a two-camera setup, thinking something like it might someday be mounted inside one dispensing tube of the Nanoracks cubesat carrier that dispenses up to six cubesats at a time from the International Space Station.

A time-of-flight camera would emit flashes of infrared light to bounce off the cubesats as they departed to calculate each cubesat’s velocity during the deployment. Another camera would snap photos of each cubesat as it moved away.

Now a new class of seniors has continued the research. Axelrad says she hopes the camera idea will prove worthy of a grant or other opportunity to do a flight experiment. “We think these contributions are really going to be valuable for commercial space operations,” she says.

As for MinXSS-2, the team reacquired it intermittently and finally nailed down the satellite’s track after a month. Not long after, a computer card on the cubesat failed. The cubesat is now considered a loss, but at the time, the team remained hopeful. The last MinXSS-2 post on the team’s Twitter account was from Jan. 14, 2019: “We think the MinXSS-2 is in a really slow tumble in an unusual software condition. At some point, the battery will trigger a system reset and beacons should begin again. #hamradio operators, please keep on tracking!”

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Axelrad inducted into National Academy of Engineering

Anonymous — Tue, 08 Oct 2019 18:08:30 +0000

Axelrad inducted into National Academy of Engineering Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 10/08/2019 - 12:08

Jeff Zehnder

The National Academy of Engineering has officially elected Ann and H.J. Smead Aerospace Engineering Sciences professor Penina Axelrad as a new member.

Election to the prestigious academy is among the highest professional distinctions bestowed upon an engineer. Academy membership honors those who have made outstanding contributions to engineering research, practice or education, which might include the pioneering of new and developing fields of technology, making major advancements in traditional engineering fields or developing innovative approaches to engineering education.

Axelrad's election was announced earlier this year. She was officially inducted in a ceremony in Washington, D.C. on Sunday.

“Our faculty and alumni are improving every facet of our society through their contributions to the field, and we are proud that their accomplishments have been recognized at the highest level,” said Bobby Braun, dean of the College of Engineering and Applied Science and an NAE member. “Professor Axelrad has built her career at CU Boulder and has been a leader in shaping the aerospace community across our campus, state and nation. Her research has significantly advanced the science and utility of GPS, a technology we all use daily.”

The NAE highlighted Axelrad’s work on analysis of multipath GPS signals to improve satellite navigation and new approaches to remote sensing in making the election.

Axelrad is the Joseph T. Negler Professor and immediate past chair of the Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences. Since joining CU Boulder in 1992, she has distinguished herself through her commitment to high-quality research, dedication to education, and extensive service and leadership.

She’s been deeply involved in the vision for the college’s new $100M aerospace engineering building and helped to organize the multi-university Women in Aerospace Symposium on our campus in 2017. Axelrad was recently awarded a grant from the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory related to position, navigation and timing challenges in small spacecraft and she currently leads a Department of Education GAANN (Graduate Assistance in Areas of National Need) program focused on growing the representation of women and underrepresented minority students in the aerospace field.

Axelrad earned her PhD in Aeronautics and Astronautics in 1991 from Stanford and joined the faculty of University of Colorado Boulder’s Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences in 1992. She served as chair of the department from 2012–17, where she oversaw a major expansion of department programs, industry partnerships and opportunities for students.

Axelrad is the 12th active faculty member, and 22nd overall, in the College of Engineering and Applied Science to be elected to the National Academy of Engineering.

In addition to Axelrad, CU alumnus Dereje Agonafer (AeroEngr ’72) was elected. Agonafer is an emeritus member of the college Engineering Advisory Council and received the college’s Distinguished Engineering Alumni Award in 1998. He is presently a professor in mechanical and aerospace engineering at the University of Texas Arlington.

Axelrad being recognized at NAE.

Axelrad: Finding Your Way Through Space & Time

Thursday, Oct. 17, 5:30 p.m.
Aerospace Building
3775 Discovery Drive. Room 120

To celebrate her induction into the National Academy of Engineering, Penina Axelrad will share highlights from her research group's journey so far, including recent advances in space situational awareness for large-scale CubeSat deployments, GPS multipath modeling and positioning in complex environments, and GPS-based bistatic radar altimetry.

Axelrad's talk is part of Research and Innovation Week on campus. It includes special seminars, TED-style talks, facility tours, and and more.

Faculty in the National Academies

National Academy of Engineering
Bernard Amadei
Kristi Anseth
Penina Axelrad
Daniel Baker
Frank Barnes
Bobby Braun
Ross Corotis
David Marshall
Diane McKnight
Dan Scheeres
Philippe Spalart

National Academy of Medicine
Kristi Anseth
Chris Bowman

National Academy of Sciences
Kristi Anseth

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New NSF quantum award has applications for space exploration

Anonymous — Wed, 18 Sep 2019 19:17:49 +0000

New NSF quantum award has applications for space exploration Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 09/18/2019 - 13:17

Researchers in the CU Boulder College of Engineering and Applied Science are part of a new National Science Foundation award that could have applications in deep space exploration.

The three-year award, titled Quantum Control of Ultracold Atoms in Optical Lattices for Inertial Sensing for Space Applications, totals $1.9 million and is led by Professor Dana Anderson in the Physics Department. Other CU investigators include Smead Aerospace Engineering Sciences Professor Penina Axelrad; Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering Assistant Professor Marco M. Nicotra; and physics Professor Murray Holland. Professor Alex Zozulya at Worcester Polytechnic Institute is also an investigator on the project.

The interdisciplinary team is trying to advance optical atomic lattice inertial sensing technology and determine its potential use for space navigation. The physics behind optical atomic lattices shows great promise of bringing about the next generation of high-precision inertial sensors. The team will assess requirements for use of these in space navigation, and will design, build and test a prototype sensor to meet these requirements. By precisely sensing disturbing forces acting on spacecraft in interplanetary space, quantum sensors could reduce dependence on tracking from the Earth and enhance autonomy for deep space exploration.

The award is part of the Quantum Idea Incubator for Transformational Advances in Quantum Systems program. That program is designed to support interdisciplinary teams that will explore highly innovative, original and potentially transformative ideas for developing and applying quantum science, quantum computing and quantum engineering according to the NSF.

“I am looking forward to this engineering and physics collaboration,” Anderson said. “Here is hoping that we are one of several for the campus going forward.”

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Professor Axelrad inducted into National Academy of Engineers

Anonymous — Thu, 07 Feb 2019 20:12:57 +0000

Professor Axelrad inducted into National Academy of Engineers Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 02/07/2019 - 13:12

The National Academy of Engineering has elected Ann and H.J. Smead Aerospace Engineering Sciences professor Penina Axelrad and alumnus Dereje Agonafer (AeroEngr ’72) as new members in 2019.

The NAE elected 86 new members and 18 foreign members to its 2019 class, NAE President C.D. (Dan) Mote Jr. announced Thursday. This brings the total U.S. membership to 2,297 and the number of foreign members to 272.

The NAE highlighted Axelrad’s work on analysis of multipath GPS signals to improve satellite navigation and new approaches to remote sensing in making the election.

Axelrad is the 12th active faculty member, and 22nd overall, in the College of Engineering and Applied Science to be elected to the National Academy of Engineering.

Alumnus also among those elected

Dereje Agonafer earned a degree in aerospace engineering from CU Boulder in 1972 before earning his master’s degree and PhD in mechanical engineering from Howard University.

Agonafer spent much of his professional career at IBM before joining the faculty at the University of Texas at Arlington in 1999, where he has advised more than 200 graduate students and published 200-plus papers. He now holds the title of Jenkins Garrett Professor and leads two research centers.

His research focuses on electronic packaging and thermal/thermomechanical management of electronics. A recipient of numerous awards recognizing his contributions to the field, Agonafer became a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors in 2017.

Since graduation, Agonafer has remained closely involved with CU Engineering, earning the Distinguished Engineering Alumni Award in 1998 and serving on the dean’s Engineering Advisory Council.

Faculty in the National Academies

National Academy of Engineering

Bernard Amadei
Kristi Anseth
Daniel Baker
Frank Barnes
Bobby Braun
Ross Corotis
David Marshall
Diane McKnight
Dan Scheeres
Philippe Spalart

National Academy of Medicine
Kristi Anseth
Chris Bowman

National Academy of Sciences
Kristi Anseth

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Axelrad earns grad student funding from Department of Education

Anonymous — Fri, 26 Oct 2018 19:24:32 +0000

Axelrad earns grad student funding from Department of Education Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 10/26/2018 - 13:24

Smead Aerospace Professor Penina Axelrad has been awarded a $1.1 million Graduate Assistantships in Areas of National Need (GAANN) grant from the US Department of Education. The program will provide funding to grow representation of women and underrepresented minorities with PhDs in Aerospace Engineering Sciences.

This project seeks to increase the number of U.S. PhD graduates entering the workforce, with expertise in the critical aerospace technologies needed to maintain U.S. global leadership and support regional aerospace needs. The United States faces a critical need in the aerospace and defense sector for professionals with advanced degrees in aerospace engineering and related fields. Today’s high-tech, interconnected society is ever more reliant on satellites and unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) for our national security, economic development, and scientific advancement.

Advances in GPS and Earth observation from low and high altitudes have revolutionized our understanding of the Earth and human activity, their impact on each other, how we communicate, and how business gets done.

The coming wave of mega-constellations and commercial drone activities will further expand the impact of complex aerospace technologies on daily life. Such dramatic shifts have created a national need for PhD graduates who can expertly navigate and lead in these disciplines – to define how UAS will operate in the national airspace system; to reliably predict the behavior of complex systems operating in extreme conditions; to protect communication links and mission critical software from interference; to design spacecraft, UAS, and new mission concepts to provide services for disaster response, detect hazards in the environment, and explore space.

In addition to Axelrad, grant co-investigators include Brian Argrow, Jade Morton, Scott Palo, Alireza Doostan, John Evans, Allie Anderson, David Klaus, Eric Frew, Hanspeter Schaub, Tomoko Matsuo, and Daniel Scheeres. Smead aerospace staff members providing support for the grant include Lewis Groswald, Margie Schneider, and Madeline Job.

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