The Vertical Flight Society announces the winners of its prestigious Robert L. Lichten technical award. The overall winner will be recognized during the Society’s 81st Annual Forum & Technology Display in Virginia Beach, Virginia, USA (www.vtol.org/forum), as part of the Opening General Session on Tuesday, May 20, 2025.

Angela Buccio of Bell Textron, Inc. was selected as the overall Lichten Award Winner. Her winning paper, “Modeling Unsteady Aerodynamics in RCAS for High-Speed Rotor Aeroelastic Applications,” will be presented at Forum 81 on Wednesday afternoon, May 21, during the Dynamics II session. Ms. Buccio was the winner of the Society’s Southwest US Region Lichten Competition.

Duncan Waanders from the Georgia Institute of Technology was selected as the Lichten Award Runner-up for his paper, “A Real-Time-Reduced Order Model for the Atmospheric Boundary Layer Including Roughness Sublayer.” His paper will be presented during the Modeling & Simulation IV technical session on Thursday afternoon, May 22. He was the VFS Southern US Region Lichten Competition winner.

The other regional winners are as follows:

• Omar Abdel-Dayem of Sikorsky, a Lockheed Martin Company was the winner of the US Northeast Region with his paper, “S-92 Main Gearbox (MGB) Upper Housing Usage-Based Earned Credit.”
• Micaela I. Crispin of Pennsylvania State University was the Mideast US Region winner for her paper, “Modeling and Simulation for Control Allocation Design on an eVTOL Tiltrotor Aircraft.”
• Eleonora Giovanardi of Leonardo Helicopters was the Europe-Africa Region winner for her paper, “Effects of Gyroscopic Phenomena on Tuned Vibration Absorbers Design and Performance.” Her paper will be presented during the Dynamics IV session on Thursday morning, May 22.

The Robert L. Lichten Award was established in 1976 to encourage VFS members who have not previously presented the results of their work at a technical meeting to begin to do so through presentations at local and regional VFS meetings. Each of the ten regions around the world is eligible to select a regional winner to enter the international competition, from which the overall winner and runner-up are selected. The overall Lichten Award Winner is invited to present his/her technical paper at the Forum and receives complimentary travel to and lodging at the Forum, as well as a $500 honorarium, sponsored by Bell Textron, Inc. The runner-up is also invited to present at the Forum and receives a certificate and complimentary Forum registration.

The Lichten Award honors the memory of Robert L. Lichten, an outstanding rotary-wing engineer and the Vertical Flight Society’s 22nd President, serving 1965–1966. Lichten was a skilled and dedicated innovator, who spent much of his career championing early tiltwing and tiltrotor concepts. He was considered the “Pioneer of Tiltrotor Technology” for his work at Bell, where he became the director of advanced technology.