Three UCLA Engineering Grad Students Received Prestigious Defense Fellowships

Jul 3, 2015

By UCLA Samueli Newsroom

Three graduate students at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science have received a National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) Fellowship, one of the country’s top honors for students in the early part of their graduate study. The fellowships are awarded to students in 15 areas of Department of Defense interest.

The three students – Andrea Besnard, Carleton Knisely, and Gary Li – all in the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department, are studying topics in aeronautical and astronautical engineering. They were among six UCLA students and 180 nationwide to receive the fellowship, announced by the program’s administrating agency, the American Society for Engineering and Education. The fellowship pays for each student’s full tuition and academic fees for three years. Students also receive a stipend.

Andrea Besnard
NDSEG Area: Aeronautical and astronautical engineering.
Research interests: Issues in transverse jet shear layer instabilities and their control, structural characteristics, mixing, and localized straining.
Faculty advisor: Ann R. Karagozian
Lab: Energy & Propulsion Research Laboratory
Besnard was an engineer at SpaceX in Hawthorne, Calif. before joining UCLA.

Carleton Knisely
NDSEG Area: Aeronautical and astronautical engineering.
Research interests. Analysis of hypersonic real gas boundary layers using advanced numerical tools.
Faculty advisor: Xiaolin Zhong
Lab: Hypersonics And Computational Aerodynamics Group
Knisley was an undergraduate mechanical engineering student at Bucknell University before joining UCLA.

Gary Li
NDSEG Area: Aeronautical and astronautical engineering.
Research interests: Investigating the behavior of advanced aerospace materials under unique plasma conditions.
Faculty advisor: Richard Wirz
Lab: Plasma and Space Propulsion Laboratory
Li was an undergraduate physics and astrophysics student at UC Berkeley before joining UCLA.

Share this article