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Back to school for Space Vehicles Directorate engineer

  • Published
  • By Michael P. Kleiman
  • AFRL Space Vehicles Directorate Public Affairs
For Contract Engineer Eric Pollard, designing and developing deployable structures for the cosmos at the Air Force Research Laboratory's Space Vehicles Directorate, Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M., has been his vocation for the past year and a half, but beginning in August 2006, a college campus will serve as his worksite.

Selected for a 2006 - 2007 National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship, Mr. Pollard will work on a doctorate in aerospace engineering sciences for the next three years at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research-sponsored award will fund tuition and fees, as well as provide a monthly stipend to the Sioux City, Iowa, native.

"Being chosen for the National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship has been an honor for me, but it also serves as a testimony to the individuals who have served as my mentors during the past few years including Dr. R. Scott Erwin, Dr. Brett deBlonk, Dr. Jeffry Welsh and Dr. Thomas Murphey (Space Vehicles Directorate), as well as my master's degree advisor, Christopher Jenkins (Montana State University)," said Mr. Pollard. "The award is also an acknowledgement of the leading edge technology development occurring at the Space Vehicles Directorate."

After completing his master's degree in mechanical engineering from the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology, Rapid City, S.D., Mr. Pollard, a contract employee with CSA Engineering, Inc., began his third stint working at the AFRL unit in January 2005. During the summers of 2003 and 2004, he participated in the directorate's Space Scholars Program, which enables undergraduate and graduate students, supported by permanent staff scientists and engineers serving as mentors, to perform original research projects to improve Air Force technology in space, as well as it generates a potential recruiting pool for future hires.

"During both summers as a Space Scholar Program participant, I focused on the dynamic response of a membrane for use as a deployable aperture (mirror dynamics in a telescope), which complimented my master's degree research - predicting the deployment of a similar membrane system with shape memory alloy elements," said the engineer. "I came back and finished the analytical and numerical study during the second four-month program session in 2004, and the research culminated in a paper presented at a conference."

In his current duties, Mr. Pollard seeks to optimize the design of two deployable composite architectures through analysis and proto-typing with the end product featuring mass efficiency and low risk relative to expected on-orbit loads and requirements. Due to his receiving the NDSEG Fellowship, he, however, will soon focus his attention on completing a design manual for two-dimensional space structures that can be delivered to the DOD.

"Although I will be conducting research at the University of Colorado at Boulder on an identified DOD need for the next three years, I still would like to come back to the directorate as a Space Scholars Program participant in the next couple of summers," said the NDSEG Fellowship recipient.

Mr. Pollard credits the Space Vehicles Directorate's innovative research and development environment as a significant contributing factor to his selection for the highly competitive federal program, which provides the United States with talented, doctorally-trained Americans who will lead ground-breaking research projects in disciplines having maximum payoff to national defense needs.

"The Space Vehicles Directorate is a technology incubator. An engineer like myself can be exposed to all facets of technology development," said Mr. Pollard. "This is where it is at for bleeding edge deployable structures research, and we intend to continue to be the world leader in experimental composite applications."