Dryden Engineer Feted

Dec. 6, 2005 - Navarro gets honored for contributions
EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE - An aerospace engineer at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center has been named the recipient of the National Society of Mexican American Engineers and Scientists' top award for 2005.

Robert Navarro , currently project manager for flight experiments on the Altair unmanned aircraft system at NASA Dryden, was honored with the MAES Medalla de Oro (Gold Medallion) award for outstanding technical contributions and educational outreach to the Latino community.

Navarro was one of three Latino engineers who received the honor in November at the black-tie La Medalla do Oro banquet held in connection with the organization's 31st annual symposium in San Jose .

The event is intended to honor professional members of MAES, industry supporters and representatives of academia for outstanding achievement, technical contribution and service to the Mexican American community.

In addition to the award, a $4,000 scholarship was presented in Navarro's name to Maria Hernandez, an engineering student at the University of New Mexico .

The MAES Padrino/Ahijada (godfather/godchild) scholarship pairs a professional with a student member to provide guidance and serve as a role model.

Navarro has been a member of MAES since he was an engineering student at California State University , Fullerton . He has presented technical papers at their conferences and has also conducted motivational workshops, as well as serving as a keynote speaker at various activities of regional MAES chapters.

After obtaining his bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering in 1989, Navarro joined NASA at the Glenn Research Center in Ohio as a gas and fluids engineer.

He worked on a variety of projects, including serving as principal engineer on three thermal and fluids experiments flown on space shuttle missions.

After transferring to NASA Dryden in 1995, Navarro was involved in a number of engineering roles. He served as principal investigator for a series of experiments on the F/A-18 systems research aircraft and as chief engineer for that aircraft and the Helios solar-electric flying wing.

More recently, he served as project manager for a short series of research flights by the Pathfinder-Plus solar aircraft earlier this year that acquired data to improve aeroelastic analytical tools for flexible-structure aircraft.

In his present position, Navarro is responsible for management of earth science missions using General Atomics Aeronautical Systems' Altair unmanned aircraft system (UAS).