UTA engineering professor honored by AAS for leadership, technical contributions

Kamesh Subbarao, a professor in the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering (MAE) Department at The University of Texas at Arlington, is the University’s first faculty member to earn the honor of fellow of the American Astronautical Society (AAS).

Subbarao, who has been at UTA since 2003, was honored for his “technical contributions in estimation and control, and for leadership in AAS technical activities.”

“I am honored and humbled to join this group of esteemed colleagues, many of whom have been my teachers and role models,” Subbarao said.

Subbarao is the director of the Aerospace Systems Laboratory at UTA. The lab conducts research in modeling, simulation, control and estimation of mechanical and aerospace systems from a systems perspective. Over the past few years, he has looked at diverse mechanical and aerospace systems, and his theoretical contributions, numerical simulations, algorithms and software span several applications.

Subbarao’s research interests include flight mechanics, simulation and control, astrodynamics, nonlinear and adaptive control, linear and nonlinear filtering/estimation approaches, cooperation and coordination for multiple unmanned vehicles subject to measurement uncertainties and distributed time delays.

His research has been funded by DARPA, National Science Foundation, Air Force Research Lab, Office of Naval Research, NASA and several major companies. He received the Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Excellence in Teaching Award at UTA in 2016 and the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Foundation Award for “Model Reference Adaptive Control” in 2001. He is a fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society, an associate fellow of AIAA and has authored and co-authored more than 175 journal and peer-reviewed conference publications.

“Congratulations to Dr. Subbarao on this achievement. His record of research in the field of astronautics will have a lasting legacy at UTA and beyond, and he is well-deserving of being named a fellow,” said Erian Armanios, chair of MAE.

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Founded in 1954, AAS is the premier network of current and future space professionals dedicated to advancing all space activities. Previous AAS fellows include NASA astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, Eileen Collins, Alan Shepard and several others.

– Written by Jeremy Agor, College of Engineering