1989 Kenneth W. Iliff

I would like to nominate Dr. Kenneth W. Iliff for the Society of Flight Test Engineers' "Kelly" Johnson Award.

Dr. Iliff is an associate of mine at the National Aeronautics & Space Administration Ames Research Center, where he has worked for 27 years.

He has been the pioneering influence in formulating, perfecting, and advancing the science and technology of aircraft parameter estimation. This is the field of determining the coefficients of differential equations that describe a system by using the response of the system. In aeronautics, this method is used to secure estimates of the aerodynamic, structural and performance parameters from flight data.

The internationally acclaimed parameter estimation methodology which grew out of Dr. Iliff's research is today one of the most significant analytical advances in flight research and flight testing. His codes are used by virtually all flight test organizations in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Western Europe, Brazil, Japan, Taiwan, Australia, and India. They are also used for identification of other dynamic systems, including submarines, economic models, and biomedical models. He is also renowned for his contributions to model structure determination for high angle of attack flight. In acknowledgment of all of his contributions, he was recently elected a Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics & Astronautics (AIAA). He is also the 1987 Dryden Lecturer for the AIAA. The AIAA Dryden Lectureship in Research is the AIAA's most important recognition of significant individual contribution to aeronautical research. Both the Fellowship and the Lectureship are extremely prestigious awards, recognizing a career characterized by outstanding tech- nical contributions.

Dr. Iliff has been the recipient of numerous awards (list attached), including the NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Award, which is NASA's highest scientific award. As indicated in the list of awards, he is a vital member of the Shuttle team, leading the effort to determine its flight characteristics. He was the NASA Outstanding Handicapped Federal Employee of the Year in 1973, and he was inducted into the National Hall of Fame for Persons with Disabilities in 1987.

Dr. Iliff has authored nearly 80 national and international refereed technical papers, articles, and reports (list attached). This includes 22 NASA reports that require several levels of independent technical review, 11 refereed journal articles, and 17 invited papers and lectures. He has given 16 international papers and reports for NATO, AGARD, and other international organizations and has served on four international panels as an expert in aircraft and spacecraft dynamics. He has also participated in many national conferences and panels. He is currently the Chairman of the AIM Atmospheric Flight Mechanics Technical Committee. In 1986 he was the Technical Organizer of the AIAA Atmospheric Flight Mechanics Conference in Williamsburg, VA, which had more than 400 attendees. He also organized and was the featured lecturer of an AIAA Professional Study Seminar on parameter estimation in 1986.

Dr. Iliff has been at Ames Research Center since 1962 and has conducted research in an extremely wide variety of aeronautical topics. He is the Ames-Dryden Senior Staff Scientist and was previously selected as Chief of the Fluid and Flight Mechanics Branch. He has worked on most of the advanced research aircraft (including the X-15, XB-70, and Space Shuttle) that have been flown by NASA in the past 27 years: He is an Adjunct Professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles and is the Associate Director of the NASA Ames--UCLA Laboratory for Flight Systems Research. He is an ex officio member of the National Advisory Council on Space Systems and Technology Committee. He has been a member of the Society of Flight Test Engineers since 1976.

Dr. Iliff attended Iowa State University, earning a B.S. in Mathematics and a B.S. in Aerospace Engineering; the University of Southern California, earning an M.S. in Mechanical Engineering; and the University of California, Los Angeles, earning a Ph.D. in Systems Science and a M.E. in Engineering Management.