LAMIA SALAH - DOT FAA COE STUDENT OF THE YEAR 2003

Lamia Salah Wichita State University Student of the Year 2002 Presented at the COE 3rd Annual Joint Meeting  Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University Daytona, Florida November, 2003

Each year for the past 13 years the Department of Transportation (DOT)  has sponsored an Annual Student of the Year Awards ceremony to honor the most outstanding student from each participating University Transportation Center.  The FAA Centers of Excellence have been included in this award for the past five years.  Students are honored for his/her achievements and promise for future contributions to the transportation field.  Students of the Year are selected based on their accomplishments in such areas as technical merit and research, academic performance, professionalism, and leadership.

Wichita State University aerospace engineering graduate student, Lamia Salah, has won the 2002 Department of Transportation (DOT) Center of Excellence Student of the Year Award.  Salah was selected among more than 50 universities and colleges from the four Federal Aviation Administration Centers of Excellence.  She was honored as one of 33 students selected throughout the country by the DOT on January 13 in Washington, DC at the 12th Annual University Transportation Centers Outstanding Student of the Year Awards ceremony.  The student is attending Wichita State University, a member of the FAA Airworthiness Assurance Center of Excellence.  The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) nominated Salah for the prestigious award based on her FAA project work experience. 

As an undergraduate aerospace engineering student at WSU, Salah worked on an FAA sponsored project entitled “Determination of Temperature/ Moisture Sensitive Composite Properties.”  The report was finalized and submitted to the FAA in spring 2001 and is currently a DOT report. 

Salah’s graduate thesis project, “Bonded Repair of Aircraft Composite Structures,” was a joint project sponsored by the FAA Office of Airport and Aircraft Safety Research and Development, Boeing and several airlines (United, Delta, Lufthansa, USAirways) as well as several national research institutions including Sandia Laboratories at Albuquerque, NM.

In November 2002, Salah won an award for the student poster competition at the 2^nd annual FAA Centers of Excellence Joint Annual Meeting held in Wichita, Kan.  Salah is working on a master’s degree in aerospace engineering in the field of structures and solid mechanics.  Her adviser is John Tomblin, associate professor in aerospace engineering and director of research and development of the National Institute for Aviation Research (NIAR).  Salah received her bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering at WSU in August 2000 and graduated magna cum laude.  She has also worked as a research assistant for NIAR’s Composites and Advanced Material Laboratory for the past four years.  She is a member of Sigma Gamma Tau, Tau Beta Pi, Golden Key and Phi Kappa Phi national honor societies. 

Previously, the FAA has had four winners in the competition:  three from the University of Illinois – FAA Center of Excellence for Pavement Technology, and one from Massachusetts Institute of Technology – a Center of Excellence for Operations Research (NEXTOR) member.  The UTC program is administered by the Research and Special Programs Administration (RSPA) with funding from the Federal Highway Administration and the Federal Transit Administration.  The DOT continued the tradition of ‘One DOT’ again this year by including the FAA Centers of Excellence in the awards ceremony.  The mission of the DOT University Transportation Centers is to advance U.S. technology and expertise in transportation through education, research and technology transfer.