Shoal graduate wins first place in AIAA international student conference
A Shoal graduate engineer from Monash University, Ms Meaghan Munro, has won a prestigious American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) award.
The undergraduate award was presented at AIAA’s SciTech Forum in San Diego earlier this month, the world’s largest event for aerospace research, development, and technology. Meaghan took out first prize for her delivery of her paper on ‘Novel optical diagnostics for the study of shock separation in rocket nozzles’ at the international student conference.
To get to the SciTech Forum, Meaghan competed in the AIAA regional student research conference hosted by the University of Melbourne. Twenty universities participated, from 13 countries including Australia.
At SciTech, the winners of all the 7 regional competitions presented their research, including students from the University of Washington, the US Air Force Academy and The Ohio State University. The research spanned from spacecraft design to hypersonic trajectory optimisation through to experimental characterisation of plasma.
“My research focused on studying a flow phenomenon that occurs in rocket nozzles using imaging techniques in the hopes of better understanding it and ultimately, preventing failure to engines like the RS-25 used on NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS),” said Meaghan. “Studying this phenomenon is important because when it occurs it can cause violent loading to the nozzle which has caused catastrophic engine failures in the past including during a test on the Space Shuttle Main Engine.”
Shoal Group recognises that the future of our organisation, and Australian and global defence and space industries, relies on the youth of today, said Kevin Robinson, Chief Engineer, Shoal Group. “This award demonstrates that Australian engineers have a lot to bring to the table and Shoal’s graduate program aims to develop high-performing people like Meaghan to keep delivering innovation, excellence and be the thought leaders of tomorrow.”