UMD Hypersonics Team Flies High in Inaugural Year

A recently-formed student hypersonics team at the University of Maryland (UMD) reached the finals of the University Consortium of Applied Hypersonics’s (UCAH) flight design competition, marking a notable success for an endeavor that began only months ago.

The UMD team was among seven that made it to the finalist round, with students from the University of Tennessee and Rutgers University ultimately taking the top spots.

The competition challenged teams to develop innovative, feasible, and high-performance designs, specifically focusing on unpowered, low-altitude projectiles that can reach speeds between Mach 5-8.

Students Will Hamilton, Dylan Hurlock, Eric Jo, Kevin Kyle, Kenshiro Lim, Owen Litvany, and Nick Purswani (team leader) adopted a hybrid approach that uses a waverider design—which generates a shockwave that provides added lift—for the nose section.

The team decided on a hybrid concept that harnesses advantages of a waverider design while avoiding excess drag.

The team was thus able to benefit from the extra lift while avoiding the increased drag that comes with a full waverider design, which had been the team’s first choice. Explains Purswani: “this allowed better stability, payload integration in the aft section, and overall performance.”

Much of the initial work on the design was undertaken during the summer, with several team members receiving stipends through the Aerospace Engineering Research Opportunity Scholarship (AEROS) program. The AEROS-funded students worked under the supervision of Associate Professor Christoph Brehm (aerospace engineering), Professor Johan Larsson (mechanical engineering), Professor Stuart Laurence (aerospace engineering), and Gianna Valentino (materials science).

The team is part of a larger UMD Hypersonics Club that was also formed in 2025, with Brehm as the faculty advisor. Brehm also co-leads the aerospace engineering department’s hypersonics capstone course together with Kevin Bowcutt, Boeing’s chief scientist for hypersonics.

Purswani said he and his teammates “learned more in months than most do in years.”

"Achieving a top-7 finish nationwide is something our all-undergrad team is incredibly proud of, especially as newcomers to hypersonics,” Purswani said. “We went from basic concepts to developing elegant custom tools and an optimized design that balanced low-altitude constraints with payload stability.”

“A huge thank you to Dr. Brehm, Dr. Larsson, Dr. Valentino, Dr. Laurence, and Dr. Bowcutt for their amazing support of our learning and work,” Purswani said. “Excited for what's next!"

Published February 20, 2026