The Vertical Flight Society, the world’s leading professional society dedicated to advancing vertical flight, announced today that US Army Senior Scientist Dr. Mark B. Tischler has been selected for the prestigious 2020 Alexander A. Nikolsky Honorary Lectureship. The Lectureship is awarded to “an individual who has a highly distinguished career in vertical flight aircraft research and development and is skilled at communicating technical knowledge and experience.”

This, the 40th Annual Nikolsky Lecture, is entitled, “Flight Control Challenges and Technologies for Future Rotorcraft.” In his lecture and the accompanying in-depth article, Tischler will articulate his vision based on his vast expertise in aircraft system identification, flight control, handling qualities and simulation.

Dr. Tischler’s efforts and ground-breaking accomplishments in rotorcraft system identification, flight control, handling qualities and simulation have had a significant impact on how modern rotorcraft flight control systems are designed and developed, how handling qualities requirements are characterized, specified and evaluated, and how aircraft flight test and simulations are conducted. His efforts have reduced the time and cost required to characterize the flight dynamics of rotorcraft and to optimize and tune a flight control system to meet specification requirements. His ability to envision change, collaborate with industry, academia, and international partners, develop and transition technology, publish comprehensive and world-recognized standard textbooks, teach his methods for over 25 years, and seek a broad range of flight-test applications for continuous improvements in his methods has provided tools and methods that will increase the safety and effectiveness of future rotorcraft that must fly faster, have greater agility, autonomy and operate more frequently in degraded visual conditions. Tischler has also mentored a generation of vertical flight researchers and equipped them with the fundamentals, methods and skills they will need to solve increasingly difficult problems.

Tischler, a US Army Senior Scientist (ST), ranked as one of the federal government’s most renowned scientists, has received numerous honors and awards during his career. Tischler received the Department of the Army Research and Development Achievement in 1989, 1997, 2002 and 2007. He was recognized as an Army Senior Technologist for Flight Control in 2013, the greatest rank available for an Army scientist. In 2009 and 2018, he was awarded the Presidential Distinguished Rank Award; in 2017 he received the Superior Civilian Award for founding and leading a US-Israel memorandum of agreement for three decades. VFS selected Tischler as a VFS Technical Fellow in 2007. He has also received numerous best technical papers awards by VFS and the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA).

Tischler will present the Nikolsky Lecture at the Vertical Flight Society’s 76th Annual Forum & Technology Display, on Tuesday afternoon, May 19, 2020, at the Palais des congrès de Montréal in Montreal, Canada; he will then be honored the following evening at the Forum 76 Annual Grand Awards Banquet with the presentation of the Alexander A. Nikolsky medallion and certificate. A detailed written treatise expanding his lecture will be featured in the Journal of the AHS, the world’s only scientific journal dedicated to vertical flight. Information on Prof. Alexander A. Nikolsky and prior Nikolsky Lectures is available at www.vtol.org/nikolsky.