NASA URC (SPACE Center)

12/2/02

CONTACT:
Margie Yu
Public Affairs Spec.
(323) 343-3047

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of Events

Cal State L.A. Awarded Grant
for NASA University Research Center

Los Angeles, CA – NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) has recently awarded California State University, Los Angeles’ College of Engineering, Computer Science, and Technology a $6 million, five-year grant to establish a University Research Center (URC) for the study of aerospace technology and space science enterprises. The Center, entitled “Structures, Propulsion, Aerospace and Control Engineering (SPACE),” is the first and only NASA URC established on a CSU campus.

The URC will combine the College’s SPACE (Structures, Pointing and Control Engineering) Lab with the Multidisciplinary Flight Dynamics and Control Lab (MFDC Lab) to conduct multidisciplinary research in eight areas, including intelligent flight control, unmanned air vehicles (UAV) autonomous control, virtual aircraft design, propulsion systems, space telescope technology, digital computation, and nonlinear modeling of complex structures.

In addition to research and development, the URC (new SPACE Center) program will devote significant resources to educational programs that increase the number of degrees awarded to students who have been underrepresented in NASA-related fields. Cal State L.A. will collaborate with the University of Southern California, California State University, Long Beach (CSULB), Dryden Flight Research Center, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Boeing and TRW.

Kuei-wu Tsai, dean of the College of Engineering, Computer Science, and Technology at Cal State L.A. and a widely recognized engineering educator and leader, will serve as the principal investigator (PI) for the project. Using their combined multidisciplinary expertise in electrical and mechanical engineering, the senior co-PI’s—Helen Boussalis, chair and professor of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Maj Dean Mirmirani, chair and professor of the Department of Mechanical Engineering—will be responsible for the development and operation of the Center. Boussalis and Mirmirani have worked successfully over the past eight years on three major research projects related to structures and controls supported by NASA, the Air Force and the National Science Foundation.

For more information, contact Teresa Hagen at (323) 343-4513 or e-mail: [email protected].

Multidisciplinary Flight Dynamics and Control (MFDC) Laboratory
Using several grants from NASA Dryden Flight Research Center, and one major grant from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, Cal State L.A. Professors Maj Mirmirani, Helen Boussalis and Chivey Wu, along with Petros Ioannou (USC), established this multidisciplinary laboratory. The lab’s objectives are to establish a flight dynamics and control testbed, where a complete aircraft design—from basic requirements to detail aerodynamics, structural dynamics, control design, including fault-tolerant reconfigurable control design and virtual flight test—can be conducted in an integrated computational environment. A major objective of the project is to evaluate the developed control laws using full-fledged aircraft models and simulation capabilities of the testbed. For more information, call Maj Mirmirani at (323) 343-4492 or e-mail: [email protected].

As one of six colleges at Cal State L.A., the College of Engineering, Computer Science, and Technology is divided into five departments––the Department of Civil Engineering; the Department of Computer Science; the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering; the Department of Mechanical Engineering; and the Department of Technology. Collectively, these departments offer 12 undergraduate programs, four graduate programs and two teaching credentials. More than 80 faculty and staff service nearly 1,700 Engineering, Computer Science, and Technology students. The College fosters a unique study environment where faculty and staff are pledged to the success of students; an environment where the average class doesn’t exceed 30 students, and professors know their students by name, not number. Committed to study programs that educate through theory, practice and experiment, Cal State L.A. graduates highly-skilled engineers, computer scientists and technologists who are prepared to face the rapidly changing demands of industry, business, education, and government.

California State University, Los Angeles, is a comprehensive university at the heart of a major metropolitan city. The 175-acre hilltop campus is located five miles east of Los Angeles’ civic and cultural center. Since 1947, Cal State L.A. has been a leader in providing quality higher education. Today, the campus comprises a faculty of internationally-recognized scholars and artists, and more than 21,000 students with a wide variety of interests, ages and backgrounds that reflect the city’s dynamic mix of populations.

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