Madeline Fischer Wins 2024 European Rotorcraft Forum Padfield Award

The European Rotorcraft Forum (ERF) recognized aerospace engineering Graduate Research Assistant Madeline Fischer with the 2024 Gareth Padfield Best Young Author Award. The Padfield Award was established to recognize author(s) not older than 30 years of age who prepared and presented the most significant technical paper as judged and selected by their peers

Fischer is a second-year master's student in the Mathematical Statistics program and works with Assistant Professor Umberto Saetti in his Extended Reality Flight Simulation and Control Lab—part of the Alfred Gessow Rotorcraft Center—where she focuses on human factors related projects that prioritize human characteristics and performance at the center of system design.

Her winning research paper, "Characterization of Precision and Accuracy for Combined Visual and Haptic Localization," focused on methods for incorporating multi-sensory cueing mechanisms into aircraft systems to increase safety and performance, with a particular emphasis on rotorcraft operating in degraded visual environments.

Fischer graduated from the U.S. Air Force Academy in 2023 with a B.S. in applied mathematics and concentration in human factors engineering and is currently an active-duty officer in the U.S. Air Force.

“I am extremely honored to receive this award,” said Fischer. “In addition to the experiment and resources in our own laboratory, this project brought together efforts from two competing industries, Boeing and Airbus, in order to work toward a common goal of enhancing performance and decreasing mishaps and accidents in aviation.”

She says that she is excited for the future of this technology, and for the potential of such innovative cueing mechanisms, to increase safety and performance in aviation.

Her work not only supports a mission that she is deeply passionate about, but also strongly connected to: After graduating this December, she will begin helicopter pilot training as the next phase of her military career.

The European Rotorcraft Forum is one of the premier events in the rotorcraft community’s calendar bringing together manufacturers, research establishments, academia, operators, and regulatory agencies to discuss advances in research, development, design, manufacturing, testing, and operation of rotorcraft.

Published December 2, 2024