Welcoming Assistant Professor Vishala Arya

Jeff Zehnder — Tue, 14 Jan 2025 21:37:27 +0000

Welcoming Assistant Professor Vishala Arya Jeff Zehnder Tue, 01/14/2025 - 14:37

The spring 2025 semester is bringing a new faculty member to Smead Aerospace.

Vishala Arya is joining the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at CU ��«��Ƶ as an assistant professor in the Colorado Center for Astrodynamics Research.

Before this role, she worked at the Mission Design and Navigation Section at JPL, focusing on stochastic trajectory optimization for the Europa Clipper mission and sensor de-noising, data ﬁltering, and center of mass calibrations for the GRACE-FO mission.

Arya earned her PhD in spacecraft dynamics and control and her master’s focused on robotics from Texas A&M University, where she developed advanced interplanetary trajectory optimization constructs and autonomous covariance constrained guidance algorithms for spacecraft. Her work introduced novel extensions to classical optimization methods for non-linear systems with inequality constraints, state and control discontinuities and abrupt time triggered events.

Drawing on her multi-disciplinary experience in space missions, soft robotics, industrial engineering, bioastronautics, and sustainable engineering, her research vision is to conduct comprehensive optimization of space systems.

She aims to co-optimize trajectory, spacecraft, payload, and logistics under uncertainty with robust optimization algorithms for autonomous, fault-tolerant system design. Her focus includes campaign-level mission design optimization strategies that foster cooperation among multiple satellites or agents and demonstrate group resilience.

Arya has received numerous honors, including the NASA Honors Award for the GRACE-FO mission, the Breakwell Award, and several fellowships such as the DAAD Scholarship, HEEP, and Outstanding Aerospace Graduate Excellence Fellowships during her undergraduate and graduate studies.

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