Smead Faculty Fellows

The Smead Program honors outstanding faculty through three different programs, each founded through the generous support of Ann and H. Joseph Smead, the aerospace department's namesake:

  • A. Richard Seebass Endowed Professorship (established 2001)
  • Smead Faculty Fellows (established 2007)
  • Smead Endowed Chair of Space Technology (established 2017)

Each program serves as an important recruitment and retention tool for leading faculty researchers to the department, providing financial support and discretionary funding. Honorees have made outstanding contributions to their field and represent the best of aerospace engineering sciences.

The A. Richard Seebass Endowed Professorship was the first endowed professorship in the Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences, established in 2001. It honors the memory of Seebass, who was dean of the College of Engineering from 1981 to 1994, a period of great expansion, and served as chair of the aerospace department from 1994 to 1999. Joe Smead met and befriended Seebass in 1993 as a result of their shared interests in the engineering programs at Ҵýƽ.

The Smead Faculty Fellows began in 2007 and the Endowed Chair of Space Technology followed in 2017.

Up to two tenure-track aerospace department faculty may be selected to be Smead Faculty Fellows. They are chosen for their outstanding research records and mentorship qualities, and support both groundbreaking science and the Student Scholars.

The Smead Endowed Chair of Space Technology, which is currently vacant, recognizes leadership, creativity, and technical excellence specifically in space systems.

Current Faculty Fellows

Tomoko Matsuo

Tomoko Matsuo is anAssociate Professor in the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences.As a Principal Investigator withfunding from the NSF, NASA, NOAA, ESA, and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, she has developed original and independent research programs, and has authored and co-authored over 70 refereed publications.

She has received an NSF CAREER award for her work on the predictability of the whole atmosphere from the ground to geospace. She has served on high-level external committees,including the National Academy of Sciences Decadal Survey for Solar and Space Physics Steering Committee (2022-), the NASA Heliophysics Advisory Committee (2017-2022),NASA Geospace Dynamics Constellation Science and Technology Definition Team (2018-2019), and the ESA Daedalus Mission Advisory Group (2018-2020).

Before joining the department in 2017, she worked at NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center and NCAR's Institute for Mathematics Applied to Geosciences. She has a PhD in Atmospheric Sciencesfrom SUNY Stony Brook,and Master’s andBachelor’sdegrees in Physics from Nagoya and Hokkaido Universities in Japan.

Jay McMahon

Jay McMahon is an Associate Professor in Smead Aerospace Engineering Sciences and the Colorado Center for Astrodynamics Research at the University of Colorado in Boulder, where he heads the Orbital Research Cluster for Celestial Applications (ORCCA) lab. ORCCA's research focuses on: autonomous space vehicle guidance, navigation, and control; asteroid science and missions; resource utilization; and space situational awareness.

He is an Associate Editor for the AIAA Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets and the AIAA Journal of Guidance Control and Dynamics, as well as being an Associate Fellow in AIAA. He was named a NASA Institute for Advanced concepts (NIAC) fellow in 2017, and a NASA Early Career Faculty fellow in 2018, and a DARPA Young Faculty Award winner in 2020. Asteroid (46829) McMahon (a main-belt binary asteroid) was named in his honor.

McMahon earned hisBS in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Michigan, MS in Astronautical Engineering from the University of Southern California, and PhD in Aerospace Engineering Sciences from Ҵýƽ.

Past Faculty Fellows

Nisar Ahmed
Alireza Doostan
Marcus Holzinger
Eric Frew
Mahmoud Hussein
Hanspeter Schaub
Kurt Maute

A. Richard Seebass Chair

Daniel Scheeres

Daniel Scheeres is a University of Colorado Distinguished Professor, the A. Richard Seebass Chair of Aerospace Engineering Sciences, and a member of the National Academy of Engineering.

His research spans astrodynamics and spacecraft navigation to planetary science and celestial mechanics. A primary focus of Scheeres’ work is studying mechanics of small bodies (such as moons and asteroids) with applications to planetary and asteroid missions.

A separate focus of Scheeres' research is in the field of Space Situational Awareness, where his lab studies the dynamics and estimation of orbital debris and active satellites. Scheeres is currently serving as the Radio Science Lead and Co-Investigator for NASA’s OSIRIS REx Asteroid Sample Return Mission.

is named “Scheeres” in recognition of his contributions to the scientific understanding of the dynamical environments of asteroids.