Three UMD Students Take Top Honors at SSPI Engineering Student Competition

Three University of Maryland (UMD) aerospace engineering graduate students took top honors at the Society of Satellite Professionals International (SSPI) Engineering Student Competition in Space Systems that took place April 25, 2016 at George Mason University.

Matt Marcus, advised by Associate Professor Raymond Sedwick, received the SSPI Innovation Award and a $1000 scholarship for his talk “LEO Debris Removal using Genetic Algorithms.”

Matt Marcus Dylan Carter, advised by Assistant Professor Christine Hartzell, received the SSPI Scientific Method Award and a $1000 scholarship for his talk “A model of Granular Tribocharging for Dielectric Mixtures with Continuous Size Distributions.”

Matt Marcus Anthony Decicco, advised by Assistant Professor Christine Hartzell, received the SSPI Most Effective Presentation Award and a $1000 scholarship for his talk “System Level Design Considerations for Asteroid De-Spin Via Neutral Beam Emitting Spacecraft."

UMD attended the competition at the invitation of the SSPI Mid-Atlantic Chapter. The SSPI Mid-Atlantic chapter, which serves the areas of Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia, and the District of Columbia, has a partnership with the university and regularly supports UMD students through SSPI Mid-Atlantic Chapter Scholarships which provide funding to students pursuing research in relevant fields.

This spring's SSPI Mid-Atlantic Chapter Scholarship recipients were aerospace engineering Ph.D. student Aber Masati ('16) and undergraduates Kate Melone ('19) and Patrick Washington ('17).

To learn more about SSPI, visit http://www.sspi.org/cpages/home

Published June 14, 2016