UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Puneet Singla, associate professor of aerospace engineering at Penn State, has been elected an American Astronautical Society (AAS) Fellow.
The distinction of Fellow recognizes AAS members “who have made significant scientific, engineering, academic and/or management contributions to astronautics and space, in addition to contributions to AAS.”
“I am honored and humbled to be elected as an AAS Fellow,” said Singla. “I truly appreciate the recognition of my work and service to the AAS community by my peers.”
Singla has been an AAS member since 2000. He is currently the AAS technical chair for the AAS/AIAA (American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics) Astrodynamics Specialist Conference, which will be held in August 2018. Singla has also served as session chair for several AAS conferences and was a member of the AAS Breakwell Paper Award Committee in 2015 and 2016.
His research interests include stochastic systems, optimal estimation and control, nonlinear dynamical systems and system identification. The interplay between dynamic system analysis, estimation and control lay the scientific groundwork for diverse problems of varying scales such as tracking resident space objects, accurate prediction of toxic material plumes through the atmosphere or water, structural health monitoring of civil infrastructure, tumor motion modeling for conformal radiation therapy and control of autonomous systems.
Singla’s most recent work with the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) involves the tracking and characterization of resident space objects by assimilating sensor observations with numerical model predictions.
A Penn State faculty member since 2017 and director of the Control and Analysis of Stochastic Systems Lab, Singla has been recognized with several awards and honors during his career. He received the Outstanding Young Engineer Award and was inducted into the Aerospace Engineering Distinguished Alumni Academy at Texas A&M University in 2016. He also received a National Science Foundation CAREER Award in 2011, an AFOSR Young Investigator Research Award in 2010 and the University of Buffalo’s Exceptional Scholar: Young Investigator Award in 2010.
Singla is also an AIAA Associate Fellow and a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics and the American Society for Mechanical Engineers. He is currently the associate editor for AIAA’s Journal of Guidance, Control and Dynamics and IEEE Transactions on Aerospace and Electronic Systems.
For being named an AAS Fellow, Singla will be recognized during an award luncheon at the 56th Annual AAS Robert H. Goddard Memorial Symposium on March 14, in Greenbelt, Maryland.