Appointments, honors and activities

• Student honors:

Three teams from the School of Aviation and Transportation Technology won first prizes in different categories of the annual Airport Cooperative Research Program University Design Competition for Addressing Airport Needs. The competition, which is now in its 14th year, is run by the Transportation Research Board and encourages students to design innovative and practical solutions to challenges at airports. A team of undergraduate and graduate students from Purdue won the “Airport Environmental Interactions Challenge” category for its proposal, “A Cost-effective Approach to Predict Noise Impacts for Non-Towered General Aviation Airports.” In the “Airport Operation and Maintenance Challenge” category, a team of graduate students won first place for the project, “Aircraft Portable Stair and Accessible Loader.” Additionally, a graduate team from Purdue won first place in the “Airport Management and Planning Challenge” category for “Commercial Space Advancement through Venture and Operations (CSAVO) Initiative.” A fourth Purdue team won second place in the “Runway Safety/Runway Incursions/Runway Excursions” challenge.

First-place teams receive a $3,000 prize and will present their work in Washington, D.C., in October. More information about the winning projects can be found here.

Brittany Paige Mihalec-Adkins, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies, has received a research grant by the Horowitz Foundation for Social Policy. Mihalec-Adkins is among one of 25 scholars to receive the $7,500 grant for the 2019 award year. Her research is titled “Explaining Variation in Legal Outcomes and Well-Being Trajectories for Child Welfare-Involved Families in the Era of Adoption and Safe Families Act.” The Horowitz Foundation awards the policy-related research grants to doctoral students in major areas of social sciences whose dissertation proposals have been approved.