Daniel Hastings named American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics president-elect
The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) announced Wednesday that MIT professor Daniel Hastings has been elected president-elect of the group. Hastings, the affiliate dean of engineering for range, fairness, and inclusion; head of the Division of Aeronautics and Astronautics; and the Cecil and Ida Inexperienced Schooling Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics, will likely be AIAA’s the seventeenth president with ties to MIT and the primary Black president. Hastings will assume the presidency in Might 2024, succeeding present president Laura McGill.
Hastings mentioned “I’m honored to be elected as president-elect. The AIAA has been my skilled society for my years on the school. I observe an important line of AeroAstro school who’ve served as president of the AIAA together with Sheila Widnall and Bob Seamans. I sit up for serving to the AIAA serve the aerospace enterprise.”
As president, Hastings will lead AIAA in its mission to drive world aerospace innovation and development by means of collaboration, advocacy, and training. The AIAA brings collectively trade, academia, and authorities on the earth’s largest technical society devoted to aerospace, with almost 30,000 particular person members from 91 nations and 100 company members.
Hastings has a protracted historical past with AIAA, turning into an AIAA Fellow in 1998 and an honorary fellow in 2021. In 2003, he obtained AIAA’s Losey Atmospheric Sciences Award for research on the interplay of house plasma with high-voltage photo voltaic arrays. Hastings has served on quite a few AIAA technical committees, together with Area Sciences and Astronomy, Area Programs, and Plasmadynamics and Lasers.
Hastings joined the MIT neighborhood as a graduate scholar in 1976 after receiving his bachelor’s diploma from Oxford College. He obtained his MS (1978) and PhD (1980) levels in aeronautics and astronautics from MIT and joined the MIT school in 1985. His analysis pursuits have included laser-material interactions, fusion plasma physics, spacecraft plasma surroundings interactions, house plasma thrusters, and most lately house methods evaluation and design.
Hastings has devoted his profession to service each inside and outdoors of MIT. He served as MIT’s dean of undergraduate training from 2006 to 2013. In 2014, he was appointed a five-year time period because the director of SMART, the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Analysis and Know-how. He was appointed head of the Division of Aeronautics and Astronautics in 2019. In 2021, Hastings was appointed co-chair of MIT’s Values Assertion Committee.
Exterior of MIT, Hastings served as chief scientist of the U.S. Air Drive from 1997 to 1999. On this position, he was the chief scientific advisor to the chief of workers and the secretary and assessed numerous scientific and technical points affecting the Air Drive mission. He was additionally chair of the Air Drive Scientific Advisory Board. He’s a fellow of the Worldwide Astronautical Federation and the Worldwide Council in System Engineering and a member of the Nationwide Academy of Engineering. Hastings was additionally lately named to serve on the Nationwide Area Council Customers Advisory Group by U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris.