Engineering professor wins NASA research award

By Anne Buckley

RICHMOND, Va. (Oct. 6, 2004) -- A Virginia Commonwealth University engineering professor has won a NASA award for research he presented at a faculty fellowship program.

Gregory Tait, Ph.D., an associate professor in electrical engineering, was among 30 engineers and scientists accepted into the NASA Faculty Fellowship Program at Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va.

He won the Best Research Presentation Competition for his research demonstrating a new laser and a new optical setup for testing fiber optic sensors which can be used to test strain and fatigue in aircraft.

Tait said fiber optics embedded in the wings and fuselage of aircraft enable scientists to monitor how the structure is aging by tracking various changes, including metal fatigue and microstrain. Tait said the goal eventually is to do the same thing with spacecraft.

“Technology is such that it is possible to build ‘smart structures,’” said Tait. “Smart structures are those that enable technicians to interrogate the health and integrity of a structure without taking it apart.” The same kind of technology also could be used in bridges, buildings and other structures, he said.

Tait’s areas of research include the development of high-speed photonic and fiber optic devices, optical interferometric sensors and optical heterodyne techniques for microwave and millimeter-wave generation. He has published more than 55 papers in peer-reviewed professional journals and conference proceedings.

The NASA Faculty Fellowship Program, launched in 1964, is a summer program for engineering and science educators where faculty members spend 10 weeks working on research with their NASA peers. For last summer’s program, approximately 200 of 762 faculty applicants were selected to participate at NASA sites around the nation.