AIAA SciTech 2025 paper recognized

Devin Merrell, a PhD student, was awarded the 2025 AIAA David Weaver Thermophysics Best Student Paper Award by the Thermophysics Technical Committee at the 2025 AIAA SciTech Forum in Orlando, FL. His paper, entitled “Simultaneous, Pathlength-Amplified Laser Absorption Measurements of Excited Air Species in a Shock Tube” (AIAA-2025-1995), introduces a new ring-amplified configuration for shock tubes that enables simultaneous measurements of excited atomic oxygen and nitrogen states. This work addresses a longstanding need for experimental validation data at lower temperatures to aid the development of accurate electronic excitation models in nonequilibrium hypersonic flows. Congratulations to Devin on this outstanding achievement!