Congratulations to Dr. Dimitra Panagou, Aerospace Engineering Assistant Professor, for her selection into the NASA Early Career Faculty Program for her proposal, “The AstroNet: A Human-Centric Network of Free Flying Space Co-Robots.”

NASA’s 2016 Early Career Faculty solicitation called for proposals from outstanding early career academics for “innovative, early-stage space technology research of high priority to NASA’s Mission Directorates.” As a recipient of this prestigious award, Dr. Panagou will receive $600,000 in funding over three years to develop foundational guidance, navigation and control (GNC) algorithms to empower human-robot collaboration in space. Specifically, she will leverage hardware currently on the International Space Station to develop a swarm of robots to assist astronauts during extra-vehicular walks.

For Dr. Panagou, this research represents a natural progression of her control theory expertise into space technologies. She has previously developed GNC algorithms for multi-agent autonomous marine, ground and aerial systems.

Please join us in celebrating Professor Panagou’s achievement! To learn more about her research, please visit Dr. Panagou’s faculty page.