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Senior Lecturer Mary Bowden (left) and Willis H. Young Jr. Professor of Aerospace Engineering Education Derek Paley (right) |
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The University of Maryland A. James Clark School of Engineering recognized two Department of Aerospace Engineering faculty members with 2024–25 Faculty and Staff Awards.
Mary Bowden received the Dean’s Outstanding Performance Award for Professional Track Faculty, which recognizes recognize exceptionally influential accomplishments in either, or both, the areas of research and teaching.
Bowden is a Senior Lecturer in the department where she also serves as a Keystone Instructor and Director of the Maryland Space Grant Consortium’s Balloon Payload Program (BPP). Since joining UMD in 1996, she has been a dedicated educator and mentor, recognized for her excellence in teaching and her commitment to student success.
As director of the Balloon Payload Program, Bowden has overseen more than 100 successful high-altitude balloon launches since the program's inception in 2003 . BPP provides students with hands-on experience in designing, constructing, launching, and recovering payloads that reach near-space altitudes (85,000–100,000 feet), offering a practical platform for atmospheric and engineering experiments .
Bowden has received several awards for her dedication to education and mentorship, including the Women in Aerospace Educator Award in 2016 and multiple accolades from the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) UMD Student Branch.
Derek Paley received the Senior Faculty Outstanding Research Award, which recognizes senior faculty who have made exceptionally strong and influential research accomplishments.
Paley was recognized for “his exemplary leadership in establishing a successful robotics laboratory, his dedication to mentoring emerging scholars, and his central role in launching the ARTIAMAS cooperative agreement with the Army Research Lab.”
Paley is the Willis H. Young Jr. Professor of Aerospace Engineering Education and currently serves as the director of the Maryland Robotics Center. He holds joint appointments in the Department of Aerospace Engineering and the Institute for Systems Research, and is the founding director of both UMD’s Collective Dynamics and Control Laboratory and the Autonomous Micro Air Vehicle Team.
His research focuses on dynamics and control, including cooperative control of autonomous vehicles, adaptive sampling with mobile networks, spatial modeling of biological groups, and bioinspired robotics.
He has received numerous awards for his work, including a National Science Foundation CAREER award and a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers.
Paley earned his B.S. in Applied Physics from Yale University and his Ph.D. in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from Princeton University.
The Clark School will recognize Bowden and Paley during the school’s spring awards ceremony on May 14.
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April 30, 2025
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