Joshua Harris, a graduate student in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at Texas A&M University, was selected by the College of Engineering as the recipient of the 2017-18 Outstanding Engineering Master of Science Graduate Student Award.
This award was created to recognize current graduate students who have demonstrated excellence above and beyond usual levels of achievement for their field. Candidates are evaluated by faculty in the College of Engineering on the basis of scholastic achievements, leadership, service and character. Recipients receive a commemorative memento of recognition and a monetary award of $5,000 as a one-time scholarship. There are a total of 1,134 currently enrolled M.S. students in the College of Engineering.
Harris is a graduate research assistant in the Vehicle Systems & Control Laboratory, and has been working with his advisor, Dr. John Valasek, for six years. Harris earned his bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering, Summa Cum Laude, from Texas A&M in 2014. He is a recipient of the National Defense Science Engineering Graduate Fellowship, the NASA Aeronautics Scholarship, the Federal Aviation Administration’s PEGASAS Center of Excellence Outstanding Student Researcher Award and the Sigma Gamma Tau Outstanding Texas A&M University Aerospace Engineering Senior for 2014. Harris is currently a member of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Intelligent Systems Technical Committee. This semester he will be defending his master’s thesis, “Nonlinear Adaptive Inversion Control for Variable Stability Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems.” He has accepted a position as a software engineer with Lockheed Martin Aeronautics in Fort Worth, Texas.