Student Accomplishments

Honors Program 2022 Student Highlight: Jarred Jordan

In Spring 2022, Aerospace Engineering major Jarred Jordan received two top-flight awards:  he was named Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher of the Year for the Embry-Riddle/DB campus, and that was followed by receiving an Astronaut Scholar Award from the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation see.  Jarred follows fast on the heels of Grace Robertson, and now stands as just the second ever recipient of this exceptionally competitive award.  Jarred’s research focuses on machine learning and computer vision applications for spacecraft.  The Astronaut Scholarship Foundation prizes students who make a difference, and Jarred has also been active in the Honors Program partnership with the Derbyshire Place Community Garden, focused on developing a fresh vegetable mecca within a notable food insecure neighborhood in Daytona Beach.

Honors Program 2021 Student Highlight: Grace Robertson

In spring 2021, Grace Robertson received a highly-coveted Astronaut Scholar Award — Embry-Riddle’s first ever, after being named Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher of the Year for the Embry-Riddle/DB campus.  Grace has combined intensive research and hands-on work as a mainstay on the EagleCam project — preparing a camera that will provide for the world live feed of the Nova-C lunar lander’s touch down. Grace also took the lead on the Honors Program partnership with the Derbyshire Place Community Garden development, helping to motivate other student volunteers and establishing an organizational system that will carry on for years as the Honors Program continues to develop its efforts to elide racial, cultural, economic, and generational divides in the community.  Grace was named one of Aviation Week’s 20 Twenties in August 2022, identifying her as one of just twenty 20-something year-olds across the US who are identified as making a difference and poised to be leaders in aviation/aerospace.  

Honors Program 2020 Student Highlight: Grant Johnson

As a sophomore, Grant Johnson applied and was selected for a Science Undergraduate Laboratory internship (SULI) through the Department of Energy where he gained research experience at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). He completed two SULI internships in the spring and summer of 2018. Grant’s participation in the SULI program allowed him to delve more deeply into the study of plasma surface interactions, develop an analytical model of the transitioning sheath between different sheath regimes, and create a new four-dimensional (2D-2V) plasma simulation code. 

After the completion of his two SULI internships, Grant was hired by LLNL to continue doing plasma physics research focusing on the effects of surface electron emission and collisions on the plasma sheath.  This work also led to two publications co-authored with his mentor at the Livermore Lab in Plasma Physics Reports and Physical Review Letters in 2019. Grant and his mentor were awarded competitive machine time to test their theories at the UCLA Basic Plasma Science Facility.  In spring of 2019, Grant was named a Goldwater Scholarship recipient, and in 2020 received a prestigious National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, which he is utilizing for graduate study at Princeton University.    

Courtney Thurston Named Goldwater Scholar

Courtney Thurston, an Honors Program student double majoring in Computer Science and Computational Mathematics, was named a 2018 Goldwater Scholar. 

Courtney is a former high school valedictorian, Google CodeU scholar, and a 3x Microsoft intern in software engineering. On campus, she is an Undergraduate Researcher in the ASSURE Unmanned Aircraft Systems Center of Excellence, the student lead at the Women's Engineering Institute, the Teaching Assistant for SE300 Software Engineering Practices, a tutor in the College of Business lab, and a member of Omicron Delta Kappa & Upsilon Pi Epsilon. She was also recently named a National Honorable Mention for the NCWIT Collegiate Award.

Austin Ogle Awarded Boren Scholarship for 2017-2018 Academic Year

Austin Oglehas been awarded a Boren scholarship to study in Kyrgyzstan during the 2017-18 academic year. Austin is an Honors Program student majoring in Engineering Physics and Computational Mathematics at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. He studied Russian at the School of Russian and Asian Studies in Bishkek. This experience built on a previous State Department Scholarship titled National Security Language Initiative for Youth (NSLI-Y). Through this scholarship opportunity he studied in Chisinau, Moldova and Narva, Estonia for the 2014-2015 academic year.

Miles Bengtson Becomes 2017-2021 National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) Fellow

Honors Program graduate Miles Bengtson was named a National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) Fellow for 2017-2021. His other accomplishments and awards include Air Force Research Laboratory Space Scholar, International Space University Space Studies Program Class Speaker, Goldwater Scholarship Honorable Mention, among many, many others. He was also named the 2016 ERAU Honors Program Outstanding Graduate and ERAU Engineering Physics Outstanding Graduate.