Prof. Marilyn J. Smith

Prof. Marilyn J. Smith has been elected to fill the Academic seat on the board of the Vertical Lift Consortium, a consortium of academic and industry partners who team together to solve Army applied research for rotorcraft.

Announcement of Smith's election to the board came December 20, a little less than a month after the longtime AE professor was tapped to play another critical role in the rotorcraft community: as director of Georgia Tech's Vertical Lift Research Center of Excellence.

"This is important to transition basic research results to technology readiness levels that can be employed by the warfighters in the field and on complex problems in vertical lift missions," Smith said of her intended contributions to the VLC board.

Over the course of her career, Smith has established a towering national reputation as a vertical lift researcher and educator. An AIAA Fellow and Technical Fellow of the Vertical Lift Society (formerly the American Helicopter Society), Smith has won numerous honors for her research, mentoring and service, including Best Paper awards, two AHS Agusta-Westland International Fellowship awards, and two NASA Group Achievement awards. She serves on the VFS board of directors as the southern region director and on the VFS Technical Council as the deputy technical director of Aeromechanics.

Her formal service to the VLC will extend from January 2019 until December 2020.