Alfonso Lagares De Toledo 

Lagares was awarded the Daedalus 88 Scholarship of $10,000. The award is endowed by former AIAA President John Langford, founder and chairman of Electra.aero.

“It’s great to have this award in my career as an international student. There are challenges to international students actively participating in aerospace engineering, so having this financial support available to complete my fourth year is very valuable,” Lagares shared.

Lagares always liked rockets and was particularly interested in the Falcon 9 as a child. He hails from Madrid, Spain, and found his way to the United States while in high school as an exchange student in New York. He met robotics students who planned to attend Georgia Tech and decided to apply too. He was accepted, and the rest is history. 

Currently, he is working in the Planetary eXploration Lab (PXL), headed up by Professor Christopher Carr, detecting anomalies for space instrumentation, developing methods to determine whether an instrument is functioning properly, if there are any anomalies in it. 

The fourth-year undergraduate is a member of and helped found a new AE student organization, International Students and Professionals Aerospace. He also worked with a group of international students to win the College of Engineering’s FAIR Tech Innovation Competition with a proposal to support career development and expand access to research projects. 

Last year, he served as the president of the Ramblin’ Rocket Club’s Georgia Tech Experimental Rocketry (GTXR) team. After graduating, he plans on continuing at Georgia Tech for his master’s degree in aerospace engineering.

Lauren Paulson 

Paulson received the John Leland Atwood Graduate Award. Established in 1999, the $1,250 award, sponsored by endowments from Rockwell and what is now The Boeing Company and named in memory of John Leland “Lee” Atwood, former chief executive officer of Rockwell, North America, recognizes a student actively engaged in research in the areas covered by the technical committees of AIAA.

She is a second-year Ph.D. student in the AE School, and earned her undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering at Georgia Tech. She made her way into aerospace engineering because she was working on design and structures, where there was a lot of overlap with aerospace engineering.

“I was lucky enough to have Dr. Kelly Griendling as my statics professor in undergrad, and a lot of her example problems were aerospace-related, and it was invigorating to hear her passion when she talked about it. I wanted to learn more about aerospace. So, in the summer before my second year, I got involved with the Yellow Jacket Flying Club. I learned how to fly planes and got my pilot’s license and instrument rating.”

She signed up to make aerospace engineering her minor. During her last year as an undergrad, she applied for the Brooke Owens Fellowship. 

“Winning the Brooke Owens Fellowship cemented my love for aerospace. I interned at Draper in Boston, Massachusetts, with the harsh environments group, which had a huge impact.”

Her experience at Draper, as well as her scuba diving background, made her realize that she liked the idea of humans going places they naturally couldn’t or shouldn’t. She wondered how technology could make life possible in places not made for humans. This led her to an overall interest in space habitation systems.

Last year, on her systems of systems grand challenge project, she was heavily involved with Dassault Systems and was a part of the first year of a three-year cycle of a lunar habitation project, and it became her passion. She is a part of the astrobiology community on campus.

“It’s been really cool to learn about life and planetary sciences. It inspires creativity in my work. While many engineers focus solely on aerodynamics, propulsion, or structures, it's important to step back and consider the bigger picture: the missions we aim to accomplish and the critical science we need to understand before we get there” Paulson shared.

Paulson works in the Aerospace Systems Design Lab and holds a graduate research assistantship focused on electronic aircraft certification with Research Engineer Evan Harrison. She is also in Professor Christopher Carr’s Bioastronautics course.

“Honestly, it’s my favorite class this semester. I’m really excited to be part of this course the first year it's being offered. Having this opportunity to learn about human biology in space is truly amazing,” Paulson said.

After earning her Ph.D., she hopes to continue her research into non-terrestrial habitat design and mission planning.