Banquet Photo Gallery at Flickr

The Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences has honored eight alumni for outstanding contributions to industry, for technical achievement, and public service.

The 2025 AeroBuffs Club Alumni Academy inductees were recognized April 18 for work in business, civil, and military aerospace spheres.

“Our outstanding graduates from Smead Aerospace are both established leaders and rising stars across aerospace engineering science," said Hanspeter Schaub, professor and chair of Smead Aerospace. "We're excited to recognize these individuals for their achievements and what they've given to our industry as a whole. They're solving big challenges and pushing the limits of what is possible in aerospace engineering sciences."

Honorees were recognized in three categories:

Outstanding Alumni for Excellence in Commercial Enterprise

Under 40

• Sarah Gillis (AeroEngr BS’17) - An astronaut and Senior Space Operations Engineer at SpaceX, Gillis has played a key role in creating SpaceX’s astronaut training program and flew aboard the Inspiration4 Polaris Dawn, which took humans farther from Earth than any mission since the Apollo program.

Over 40

• Zach Hazen (AeroEngr BS’07) – Hazen is a leader in the UAS industry, having sized, configured, and provided detailed aerodynamic designs for 10 different aircraft achieving first flight. He also directed the development of five operational aircraft serving both commercial and defense sectors.
• Maciej Stachura (AeroEngr MS’10, PhD’14) – As the co-founder and CTO of Black Swift Technologies, Stachura has built a career developing uncrewed aircraft systems for extreme environments, including wildland fires, volcanoes, tornadoes, and hurricanes.

Outstanding Alumni for Excellence in Public Service

Over 40

• Michael R. Dickey (AeroEngr BS’87, MS’88) – Dickey co-founded Elara Nova, a global space consultancy, and is a career aerospace leader with two stints in public service, including as an Air Force officer and at the civilian senior executive level supporting the stand-up of the United States Space Force.
• Bruce Haines (AeroEngr BS’86, MS’87, PhD’91) – A principle research technologist at NASA JPL, Haines is a leader in the fields of precise orbit determination and calibration/validation of satellite radar altimetry, with over 250 published research papers.
• David B. Spencer (AeroEngr PhD’94) – Across a long career in education and research, Spencer has made major contributions to space flight dynamics, trajectory optimization, and orbital debris research. He is the lead author of the Interplanetary Astrodynamics textbook and has served in key roles in multiple industry associations.

Outstanding Alumni for Excellence in Technical Achievement and Leadership

Under 40

• Álvaro Romero-Calvo (AeroEngr PhD’22) – A professor at Georgia Tech, Romero-Calvo’s fundamental and applied engineering research is developing space technologies for reduced-gravity environments and advancing the fundamental understanding of their underlying physical principles.

Over 40

• David Wiese (AeroEngr MS’07, PhD’11) – As a space geodesist at NASA JPL, Wiese has played key roles in multiple remote sensing missions, including GRACE and ICESat-2. He has conducted authoritative research into the changing state of Earth’s hydrosphere and his papers have been cited over 11,000 times.