Alumni Awards 2025

David Wiese (AeroEngr MS’07, PhD’11)

Jeff Zehnder — Tue, 18 Mar 2025 22:24:13 +0000

David Wiese (AeroEngr MS’07, PhD’11) Jeff Zehnder Tue, 03/18/2025 - 16:24

Outstanding Alumni for Excellence in Technical Achievement and Leadership
Over 40 Category

David Wiese received his MS (’07) and PhD (’11) degrees in Aerospace Engineering Sciences from ��. He received his BS (’05) in Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics from the University of Texas at Austin with highest honors. His graduate work at �� focused on optimization of a dual-pair satellite constellation for monitoring temporal changes in Earth’s gravity field. The mission concept he studied during his PhD is currently in staggered phases of implementation jointly between NASA, DLR, and ESA.

After graduating from ��, Wiese joined the Solar System Dynamics group at NASA JPL. His work at JPL has focused on improving knowledge of spatiotemporal variations of water on Earth using remote sensing observations. He has been a key contributor to the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) and GRACE Follow-On (GRACE-FO) Science Data Systems Teams and currently holds leadership roles for the GRACE-Continuity (GRACE-C) mission slated to launch in 2028, serving as both the Deputy Project Scientist and the Science Data Systems Manager.

Wiese maintains an active research portfolio, and has been a member of several science teams, including the NASA GRACE and GRACE-FO Science Team, NASA ICESat-2 Science Team, NASA Sea Level Change Team, NASA Global Navigation Satellite System Remote Sensing Science Team, and the NASA/ESA Interagency Gravity Satellite Working Group. He is a contributing author to several authoritative community assessment reports on the mass balance of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, the global sea level budget, and the state of the terrestrial hydrosphere. His papers have been cited over 11,000 times. Wiese has been the recipient of the NASA Early Career Public Achievement Medal, as well as the prestigious Lew Allen Award for Excellence at JPL for his development of the GRACE JPL Mascon Solution.

His professional work is driven by the desire to better understand the changing state of the Earth’s hydrosphere and use that knowledge to better predict future changes as our planet continues to warm. In his free time, Wiese enjoys being a husband and a dad to four girls and one chocolate lab, and passing along his love of the outdoors to them, including hiking, backpacking, skiing, and mountain biking.

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Maciej Stachura (AeroEngr MS’10, PhD’14)

Jeff Zehnder — Tue, 18 Mar 2025 22:20:56 +0000

Maciej Stachura (AeroEngr MS’10, PhD’14) Jeff Zehnder Tue, 03/18/2025 - 16:20

Outstanding Alumni for Excellence in Commercial Enterprise
Over 40 Category

Maciej Stachura is the CTO and co-founder of Black Swift Technologies. He received his PhD in aerospace engineering sciences from �� working with Dr. Eric Frew on cooperative control of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS). His undergraduate studies were in aerospace engineering at the University of Toronto.

Stachura co-founded Black Swift during his last year of graduate school and continues to guide its path toward developing technologies to address important challenges such as climate change, monitoring volcanic eruptions, tracking wildfires, and helping forecast severe weather.

His professional highlights include many ground-breaking missions and world firsts with UAS. This includes being involved with Vortex2 while at ��, which saw the first systematic study of supercell thunderstorms with drones. He continued this type of work at Black Swift, developing drones that have flown in some of the most challenging conditions on Earth. This includes a purpose-built Earth science drone, the S2, which has flown hundreds of successful missions in the Arctic and into the plumes of active volcanoes from the Aleutian Islands in Alaska to the jungles of Costa Rica.

Alongside other CU alumni at Black Swift, Stachura has also helped develop the S0 drone for flights into hurricanes for NOAA. This culminated in 2024 with 19 flights into 4 different hurricanes, including category 5 storms. These missions set multiple Guinness world records, such as the highest wind ever flown by a drone, at over 200 kts, just 30 feet over the ocean. The S0 also survived the highest turbulence ever measured on Earth, by any instrument. Most importantly, these UAS will gather new types of data previously inaccessible that will help forecast and mitigate the devastating effects of these storms.

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David B. Spencer (AeroEngr PhD’94)

Jeff Zehnder — Tue, 18 Mar 2025 22:19:16 +0000

David B. Spencer (AeroEngr PhD’94) Jeff Zehnder Tue, 03/18/2025 - 16:19

Outstanding Alumni for Excellence in Public Service
Over 40 Category

David Spencer received his PhD in Aerospace Engineering Sciences at ��, his BS in mechanical engineering from the University of Kentucky, an MS in Aeronautics and Astronautics from Purdue, and an MBA from Penn State University.

His graduate work, performed under the direction of Professor Robert Culp through the Colorado Center for Astrodynamics Research, studied the development of analytical methods to perform near-optimal orbit transfers in Earth orbit.

Prior to returning to graduate school in 1991, Spencer was a member of the technical staff in the Astrodynamics Department at The Aerospace Corporation in Los Angeles. Upon completion of his PhD, he became a research program manager at the U.S. Air Force Phillips Laboratory (now the Air Force Research Laboratory) where he led the lab’s Space Debris Research Program and later also led the lab’s Advanced Space Flight Dynamics research program. He joined the faculty in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at Penn State in 1999, beginning as an assistant professor and retiring in 2021 as a full professor. During that time, Spencer was a NASA/JPL Faculty Fellow and an AAAS Science and Technology Fellow at the U.S. Department of Defense. He is now an Emeritus Professor of Aerospace Engineering at PSU.

Upon retiring from Penn State, David rejoined The Aerospace Corporation, first as a department director in the Advanced Technology Division and now as a Senior Project Leader in the Emerging Missions Flight Dynamics Department. His research areas include spacecraft dynamics and controls, trajectory optimization, theoretical and applied astrodynamics, space systems engineering, space traffic management, orbital debris dynamics and space technology development.

He is a Vice President of the International Astronautical Federation, a Full Member of the International Academy of Astronautics, a Fellow of the American Astronautical Society (AAS), an Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) and a former Associate Editor for the Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets. He is also the lead author of the textbook, Interplanetary Astrodynamics. He remains active in AAS, where he currently chairs the Honors and Awards Committee. This position follows many years as a Vice President, where he alternated between VP for Publications and VP for Technical Activities. In AIAA, he serves the National Capitol Section as the treasurer, and has served as Chair of the Astrodynamics Technical Committee.

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Álvaro Romero-Calvo (AeroEngr PhD’22)

Jeff Zehnder — Tue, 18 Mar 2025 22:16:45 +0000

Álvaro Romero-Calvo (AeroEngr PhD’22) Jeff Zehnder Tue, 03/18/2025 - 16:16

Outstanding Alumni for Excellence in Technical Achievement and Leadership
Under 40 Category

Álvaro Romero-Calvo is an assistant professor at the Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he leads the Low-Gravity Science and Technology Laboratory. His research focuses on developing space technologies for reduced-gravity environments and advancing the fundamental understanding of their underlying physical principles.

Together with his students and collaborators, Romero-Calvo has leveraged microgravity platforms —including Zero-Gravity Corp.’s parabolic flights, Blue Origin’s New Shepard suborbital rocket, and ZARM’s drop tower— to investigate the behavior of capillary multiphase flows and lunar dust dynamics. His work spans both fundamental research and applied engineering and has resulted in numerous peer-reviewed publications, U.S. patents, and industry-funded innovations. His research program has been supported by NASA, DARPA, Honeywell Aerospace, and GTRI, among others. In recognition of these contributions, he was awarded the 2023 Thora Halstead Young Investigator Award by the American Society for Gravitational and Space Research (ASGSR) and recently became a Fellow of the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program.

Romero-Calvo earned his PhD in Aerospace Engineering Sciences from �� in 2022. Previously, he received MS degrees in aeronautical and space engineering from the University of Seville (Spain) and Politecnico di Milano (Italy). He currently serves as vice-chair of the AIAA Gravity Dependent Science and Technology technical committee, board member of ASGSR, and vice-chair of the COSPAR Scientific Commission G: Material and Fluid Sciences in Space Conditions.

Beyond academia, Romero-Calvo is an avid outdoor enthusiast who frequently returns to Boulder to ski, hike, and camp—or otherwise test the limits in unnecessarily risky but undeniably fun ways. In his free time, he enjoys playing classical piano and traveling across the country in search of his next national park adventure.

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Zach Hazen (AeroEngr BS’07)

Jeff Zehnder — Tue, 18 Mar 2025 22:14:58 +0000

Zach Hazen (AeroEngr BS’07) Jeff Zehnder Tue, 03/18/2025 - 16:14

Outstanding Alumni for Excellence in Commercial Enterprise
Over 40 Category

Zach Hazen leads the Flight Sciences team at FlightHouse Engineering, an engineering services company specializing in aircraft design, UAS product development, and aerostructures that supports both emerging startups and established aerospace companies. He combines hands-on technical work with team leadership, shaping both detailed aerodynamic analysis and broader systems engineering approaches for aircraft programs across commercial and defense sectors. His work spans vehicles ranging from small tactical unmanned systems to large-scale electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft for advanced air mobility.

Prior to FlightHouse, Hazen served as Airframe Performance Lead at Martin UAV, where his contributions in aero design, flight test, simulation, and weights management helped the V-Bat ducted fan tailsitter UAS experience dramatic endurance improvements, leading to Martin’s acquisition by Shield AI in 2021. He previously spent five years at Zee.Aero (now Wisk) as a senior aerospace engineer, where he led subscale vehicle development and wind tunnel testing during the early days of the eVTOL industry.

While completing his MS in Aerospace Engineering at Wichita State University, Hazen conducted research in autonomous cooperative soaring and helped establish the Bronze Propeller Competition, an undergraduate subscale aircraft design competition. He began his professional career at Cessna Aircraft Company as a loads engineer for advanced design programs in business aviation.

Throughout his career, Hazen has sized, configured, and provided detailed aerodynamic designs for 10 different aircraft achieving first flight and led the development of five operational aircraft serving both commercial and defense sectors, including vehicles participating in the U.S. Army’s Future Tactical Unmanned Aircraft System program and DARPA Ancillary.

Hazen’s most amusing aircraft design effort is the 2013 Red Bull Flugtag world record glider which exercised his expertise in flying wing design and his ability to dance in a chicken costume. At ��, he was both a track and field athlete, holding the school record for hammer throw and the recipient of AIAA’s Best Senior Design Award for his senior capstone edge of space glider.

Hazen lives in Portland, Oregon with his wife Meabon and their two children, Teagan and Connor. Hazen attributes his success to an extremely fortunate host of generous mentors, early hands-on engineering opportunities, and the support of his family.

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Bruce Haines (AeroEngr BS’86, MS’87, PhD’91)

Jeff Zehnder — Tue, 18 Mar 2025 22:13:12 +0000

Bruce Haines (AeroEngr BS’86, MS’87, PhD’91) Jeff Zehnder Tue, 03/18/2025 - 16:13

Outstanding Alumni for Excellence in Public Service
Over 40 Category

Dr. Bruce Haines is a Principal Research Technologist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), where he has worked since 1991. During his tenure at JPL, he has led a wide variety of research and NASA flight project efforts in the fields of satellite altimetry, GPS applications and satellite geodesy.

Haines’ sustained leadership in the fields of precise orbit determination and calibration/validation of satellite radar altimetry has been important to the enduring success of the international reference series of satellite altimeter missions. Beginning with the TOPEX/Poseidon project in 1992, these NASA-partnered missions have provided an extraordinary and uninterrupted record of sea level and ocean circulation over the past three decades.

More recently, Haines is leading efforts at JPL to use GPS in determining fundamental parameters of the Earth reference frame and gravity field. This research has lent new insights on efficient architectures for the future NASA space geodesy network, which will provide foundational observations for monitoring the changing shape of the solid Earth and its oceans. He is also leading a project to advance autonomous GNSS measurement systems on the oceans to support in-situ verification of NASA missions and to advance studies of sea level and weather.

Over his 34-year career at JPL, Haines has cultivated a wide variety of university, government, and commercial partnerships, and has enjoyed mentoring many graduate students and early-career hires. Haines is author or co-author of over 250 publications, and has received the NASA Exceptional Achievement Medal, the NASA Exceptional Service Medal, and the Institute of Navigation Tycho Brahe Award.

Born and raised in Grand Junction, Colorado, Haines is a devoted CU Buff. He received his BS (1986), MS (1987) and PhD (1991) in Aerospace Engineering Sciences, all from ��. He was one of the first graduate students in the Colorado Center for Astrodynamics Research, where he was advised by its founder, Professor George H. Born.

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Sarah Gillis (AeroEngr BS’17)

Jeff Zehnder — Tue, 18 Mar 2025 22:11:30 +0000

Sarah Gillis (AeroEngr BS’17) Jeff Zehnder Tue, 03/18/2025 - 16:11

Outstanding Alumni for Excellence in Commercial Enterprise
Under 40 Category

Sarah Gillis is an astronaut and Senior Space Operations Engineer at SpaceX. She played a key role in creating SpaceX’s astronaut training program, developing mission-specific curricula and leading training for both NASA and commercial astronauts flying aboard the Dragon spacecraft. She prepared NASA astronauts for the historic Demo-2 and Crew-1 missions, as well as the Inspiration4 crew—the first all-civilian mission to orbit. Gillis is also an experienced mission control operator, who has supported real-time operations for Dragon’s cargo resupply missions to and from the International Space Station as a Navigation Officer, and as a crew communicator for Dragon’s human spaceflight missions.

Raised as a classical violinist, Gillis’ path took a turn when a high school mentor—former NASA astronaut and professor Joe Tanner—inspired her to pursue aerospace engineering at ��. She joined SpaceX as an intern in 2015, working on human-in-the-loop testing of the Dragon spacecraft’s interior before transitioning full-time into astronaut training after graduation. She received a BS in Aerospace Engineering Sciences from the �� in 2017, where she studied both engineering and dance.

In September 2024, Gillis flew as a mission specialist on Polaris Dawn, a groundbreaking spaceflight mission that ventured the farthest within Earth’s orbit since Apollo. During the flight, she and the Polaris Dawn crew completed the first spacewalk from Dragon in SpaceX-designed extravehicular activity suits, tested Starlink laser-based communications in space for the first time, and conducted nearly 40 scientific experiments. On this mission, Gillis became the youngest person to perform a spacewalk and now shares the title of being one of the two women who have traveled farthest from Earth.

Originally from Boulder, Colorado, Gillis is an avid hiker, climber, and adventurer.

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Michael R. Dickey (AeroEngr BS’87, MS’88)

Jeff Zehnder — Tue, 18 Mar 2025 21:43:50 +0000

Michael R. Dickey (AeroEngr BS’87, MS’88) Jeff Zehnder Tue, 03/18/2025 - 15:43

2025 Outstanding Alumni for Excellence in Public Service
Over 40 Category

Mike Dickey is one of four Founding Partners of Elara Nova – a global space consultancy. He is a career aerospace leader who has twice been in public service, including a uniformed career as an Air Force officer and at the civilian senior executive level supporting the stand-up of the United States Space Force.

Dickey received his BS (Special Honors) and MS degrees in Aerospace Engineering Sciences from ��. He was an early student in the Colorado Center for Astrodynamics Research, studying orbital debris modeling. He also holds a Master of Strategic Studies from Air University.

Dickey’s military service spanned a variety of roles including space operational commands in the Air Force and National Reconnaissance Office, early development of the Navy’s Theater Ballistic Missile Defense System for the Missile Defense Agency, and flight test of the B-2 Spirit bomber. Dickey was also detailed to NASA to support requirements development for the International Space Station.

After several years in industry, Mike returned to public service to lead the modernization of military space capabilities for a 21st century strategic environment and became the Chief Architect for the U.S. Space Force in its first years as a military branch.

He is an Associate Fellow in the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, a Distinguished Graduate of the U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School and has been recognized with awards from NASA and the National Reconnaissance Office.

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