Three recent A&A Ph.D. graduates, Yue Yu, Sarah H.Q. Li, and Maj. Daniel Broyles, have secured faculty positions at leading institutions in the aerospace field.

All three conducted research in our Controls area, with Yu and Li studying under Professor Behçet Açıkmeşe in A&A's Autonomous Controls Lab (ACL) and Broyles under Professor Emeritus Juris Vagners and Assistant Professor Karen Leung in the Control and Trustworthy Robotics Lab (CTRL).

Yue Yu

University of Minnesota - Twin Cities

Yue Yu, who completed his Ph.D. in 2021, has joined the University of Minnesota - Twin Cities as an assistant professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics. After graduating from A&A, he was a postdoctoral researcher at the Oden Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin. Yu's research focuses on developing efficient and scalable algorithms for controlling autonomous systems in aerospace engineering. His work extends across numerical optimization, control theory, game theory, machine learning, and network systems.

Yu was also part of the research team with Professor Açıkmeşe and others from the ACL that made significant advancements in NASA's planetary landing capabilities. This research earned the 2023 AIAA Guidance, Navigation, and Control Best Paper Award and played a crucial role in developing optimization-based guidance software for NASA's Safe and Precise Landing-Integrated Capabilities Evolution system.

Sarah H.Q. Li

Georgia Institute of Technology

Sarah H.Q. Li has been appointed as an assistant professor at the Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering at Georgia Tech. Li's research combines game theory, stochastic control, and optimization to enable large-scale autonomous interactions in disruption-prone environments such as roadways and airspaces.

While in our department, Li's exceptional work earned her the prestigious Zonta International Amelia Earhart Fellowship in 2020, one of only 35 awarded to doctoral aerospace students worldwide. She was also named an A&A Condit Fellow in 2022, supporting her dissertation-year research. After completing her Ph.D. in 2023, she was a postdoctoral researcher at ETH Zurich.

Maj. Daniel Broyles

US Air Force Institute of Technology

Maj. Daniel Broyles, who graduated from A&A this past May, has been appointed as an Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering at the U.S. Air Force Institute of Technology. His dissertation, titled "Altitude-Constrained Occlusion-Aware Coverage Planning for Autonomous UAV Wilderness Search and Rescue," focused on advancing autonomous UAV search and rescue missions in complex wilderness environments.

Broyles' research developed VWSGA+, a viewpoint generation algorithm that guarantees complete coverage in environments with complex terrains and dense vegetation. His work addresses practical constraints such as 3D geofencing and limited UAV flight times, demonstrating superior performance in providing complete coverage while adhering to real-world limitations.

A reflection of excellence

Professor Açıkmeşe shared his thoughts on these achievements: "I am immensely proud of these appointments, which showcase the exceptional talent, hard work, and innovative thinking of these students. Their success reflects the high caliber of research and education we strive for in our department. I have no doubt that they will continue to make significant contributions to the field of aerospace engineering and inspire the next generation of engineers and researchers."