•   Gordon Leishman (PhD/DSc, Glasgow, 84/03) joined AGRC as a senior scientist and became a faculty member in the Department of Aerospace Engineering in 1988. Prior to this, he was at Westland Helicopters and his expertise was in rotorcraft aerodynamics.

•  Tony Vizzini (PhD, MIT, 87) joined the University of Maryland as a faculty member in the Department of Aerospace Engineering. His expertise was in the area of composite structures. He was made Director of the Composite Research Lab (CORE).

•   Renewal of Army’s Rotorcraft Center of Excellence (88–93) as the “Center for Rotorcraft Education and Research (CRER).” Team consisted of: Al Gessow (PI), Inder Chopra, Roberto Celi, Gordon Leishman, Anthony Vizzini, Sung Lee and Jewel Barlow. Program covered dynamics, aerodynamics, flight dynamics and control, and composite structures and materials of rotorcraft.

•  Second International Conference on Rotorcraft Basic Research was held at the University of Maryland in February 1987; Al Gessow was General Chair and Inder Chopra was Technical Chair.

•  Roberto Celi (PhD, UCLA, 87) joined as a faculty member in the Department of Aerospace Engineering. His expertise was in the area of rotor dynamics and was entrusted with flight dynamics and control activities at the Center.

•   Al Gessow took retirement from the University of Maryland and became Professor Emeritus in the Department of Aerospace Engineering.

•  Won a major 5-year smart structures program (92–97): Army-URI “Smart Structures Technologies: Innovations and Applications to Rotorcraft Center.” The overall objective was to develop and refine base smart technologies to build a smart rotor system to actively minimize vibratory loads and improve performance. The team was led by the Rotorcraft Center (PI: Chopra) and consisted of five faculty members from the Rotorcraft Center (Chopra, Celi, Leishman, Lee, Vizzini), two from Mechanical (Dasgupta, Sirkis), two from Materials (Wuttig and Salmanca-Riba), two from Electrical Engineering (Krishnaprasad, Dayawansa), and two form UMBC (Anjanappa, Tasker).

•  AHS awarded the Grover E. Bell award to the Rotorcraft Centers of Excellence; Maryland, Georgia Tech and RPI for making outstanding contributions to rotorcraft education and research.

•  Renewal of Army’s Rotorcraft Center of Excellence Program (92–95). Team consisted of Inder Chopra (PI), Gordon Leishman, Roberto Celi, Anthony Vizzini, and Sung Lee. Program covered dynamics, aerodynamics, flight dynamics and control and composite structures and materials of rotorcraft. There was matching support from Rotorcraft industry consortium (Sikorksy, Bell, McDonnell Douglas and Boeing)

•  Jim Baeder (PhD, Stanford, 89) joined the University of Maryland as a faculty member in the Department of Aerospace Engineering. Prior to this, he was at Army Aeroflightdynamics Directorate at Ames and his expertise was in rotorcraft CFD.

•  Norm Wereley (PhD, MIT, 90) joined the University of Maryland as a faculty member in the Department of Aerospace Engineering. Prior to this, he was at BDM and his expertise was in rotorcraft controls and sensors.

•  Won Army Augmentation “Center for Rotorcraft Education and Research” (93-95). Team consisted of Inder Chopra (PI), Gordon Leishman, Roberto Celi, Jim Baerder, Tony Vizzini, Sung Lee and Norm Wereley. Program consisted of dynamics, aerodynamics, flight dynamics and control, composite structures, smart structures, and CFD.

•  Won an Army-DURIP award to upgrade experimental facilities and acquire new instrumentation for Center for Rotorcraft Education and Research. Team consisted of Inder Chopra (PI), Gordon Leishman and Tony Vizzini.

•  Second Army Workshop on Smart Structures was held at the University of Maryland in September 1995. Inder Chopra was General Chair and Norm Wereley and Darryll Pines were Technical Chairs.

•  Darryll Pines (PhD, MIT, 92) joined the University of Maryland as a faculty member in the Department of Aerospace Engineering. Prior to this, he was at Lawrence Livermore and his expertise was in sensors and structural dynamics. He initiated research activities in transmission and health monitoring.

•  Won a major 5-year Army-MURI (96–01): “Innovative Smart Technologies for Actively Controlled Jet-Smooth Quiet Rotorcraft.” The objective was to expand the technology base of smart structures to actively suppress external-internal-transmission noise and vibration in rotorcraft. The team was led by our Rotorcraft Center (PI: Chopra) and involved 10 faculty members from the University of Maryland, six from Rotorcraft Center (Chopra, Baeder, Celi, Leishman, Pines and Wereley), three from Mechanical (Balachandran, Krstic, Sirkis) and one from Psychology (Dooling); 1 faculty form Cornell (George); and 7 faculty from Penn State (Gandhi, Smith, Long, Vasu Vardan, Vijay Vardan, Wang).

•  Won Army/NASA’s one of the three Rotorcraft Centers of Excellence through National Rotorcraft Technology Center (1996-2001). Team for CRER consisted of Inder Chopra (PI), Gordon Leishman, Roberto Celi, Jim Baeder, Darryll Pines, Norm Wereely and Tony Vizzini. Program covered dynamics, aerodynamics, flight dynamics and control, composite structures, and smart structures applications to rotorcraft.

•  Won an Army-DURIP award to upgrade experimental facilities and acquire new instrumentation for smart structures and structural integrity activities focused on rotrocraft. Team consisted of Norm Wereley, Inder Chopra, Tony Vizzini and Jim Sirkis.

•  V. T. Nagaraj (PhD, Loughborough, 69) joined as a senior scientist at the Rotorcraft Center. He retired from Helicopter Division at HAL Bangalore (India) and his expertise was in design. He was assigned with teaching of rotorcraft design and managing of rotor rig.

•  A major gift from Gessow Family to provide endowment funds in support Alfred Gessow Chair in Rotorcraft Engineering and Elaine Gessow Fellowships. The Center for Rotorcraft Education and Research was renamed as Alfred Gessow Rotorcraft Center (AGRC).

•  Initiated participation in AHS Student Design Competition. Marat Tishchenko (former Chief Designer, MIL and currently, Professor at Moscow School of Aviation) joined Rotorcraft Center as a Visiting Professor for a period of 3–6 months and almost every year thereafter. Students won the first place under graduate category and also won new entrant award.

•  Fred Schmitz (PhD, Princeton, 69) joined as a visiting professor at AGRC and became a tenured Professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering in 2001. Prior to this, he was at Army Aeroflightdynamics Directorate at Ames and his expertise was in rotorcraft aeroacoustics. He resigned his full-time position in 2005.

•  Inder Chopra was appointed as Alfred Gessow Professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering.

•  Won renewal of NASA/Army’s Rotorcraft Center of Excellence program through National Rotorcraft Technology Center (2001–05). Team for CRER consisted of Inder Chopra (PI), Gordon Leishman, Roberto Celi, Jim Baeder, Fred Schmitz, Darryll Pines, Norm Werely, Ella Etkins and Amr Baz. Program covered dynamics, aerodynamics, flight dynamics and control, acoustics, transmission and health monitoring, smart structures and air traffic control and management.

•  Won an Army-DURIP award to acquire instrumentation for rotorcraft vibration control, structural integrity and stability augmentation. Team consisted of Norm Wereley, Inder Chopra, and Darryll Pines.

•  12th International Conference on Adaptive Structures was held at the University of Maryland; Inder Chopra was General Chair and Norm Wereley was Technical Chair.

•  Won a major 5-year Army-MURI (2004–09): “Micro Hovering Air Vehicles: Revolutionary Concepts and Navigational Advancements.” The objective is to develop the technology base to build the next-generation hovering micro air vehicles that cover both rotor-based and flapping-wing-based vehicles. The team was led by AGRC (PI: Chopra) and involved 12 faculty members from the University of Maryland, eight from Rotorcraft Center (Chopra, Atkins, Baeder, Cadou, Celi, Leishman, Pines and Wereley), two from Mechanical (Gupta and Smela) and two from Electrical (Chellappa and Ghodsi); one faculty form North Carolina A&T (Shivakumar); and one faculty from Australian National University (Srinivasan).

•  Won a major 2-year DARPA Phase-I program on “Helicopter Quieting.” The goal of the program was to develop state-of-art CFD methodology to predict unsteady loads and acoustic signatures. The program was led by AGRC (PI: Jim Baeder) and involved three faculty members from University of Maryland (Baeder, Chopra, Schmitz) and three faculty members from Stanford University (Alonso, Moin, Lele).

•  Gordon Leishman was appointed Minta Martin Professor of Engineering.

•  Sean Humbert (PhD, CALTECH, 06) joined as a faculty member in the Department of Aerospace Engineering. His expertise is in microsystem controls and bio-inspired visual guidance and navigation.

•  Won DARPA Phase-IB program on “Helicopter Quieting.” The goal of this continuation program was to validate CFD predictions of unsteady loads and acoustic signatures with wind tunnel test data. The program was led by AGRC (PI: Jim Baeder) and involved two faculty members from University of Maryland (Baeder, Chopra) and two faculty members from Stanford University (Laccarino, Moin).

•  MAST CTA Team: Inder Chopra put together a multidisciplinary multi-university team of faculty from Maryland-AGRC (Chopra, Baeder, Cadou, Hubbard, Humbert, Leishman, Shapiro, Wereley), Maryland-Mechanical (Jackson, Smela), CALTECH (Dickinson), University of California-Berkley (Fearing, Full), Harvard University (Wood), Georgia Tech (Goldman), and North Carolina A&T (Shivakumar) and submitted a 10-year CTA proposal to Army to establish a “Center on Microsystem Mechanics.” The goal is to develop fundamental technology for the next-generation highly maneuverable flying and ambulating platforms.