AIAA is pleased to announce that Rakesh Kapania, Norris and Wendy Mitchell Professor of Aerospace Engineering at Virginia Tech, will serve as the next editor-in-chief of the Journal of Aircraft, with service commencing in January 2026.
Kapania succeeds Mark Drela, Terry J. Kohler Professor of Fluid Dynamics in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who has led the journal since 2023.
The AIAA Publications Committee oversees the search and selection effort for new editors-in-chief. The search committee was led by Misty Davies, NASA Ames Intelligent Systems Division, and an AIAA Publications Committee member. Kapania was chosen from a group of highly qualified candidates.
“Being selected as the Editor-in-Chief of AIAA’s Journal of Aircraft, one of the most prestigious journals in aircraft engineering, is a tremendous honor. Succeeding one of the giants of aircraft engineering, Mark Drela, is very humbling. I am thrilled to take this role at a time when there are enormous ongoing developments in all facets of aircraft engineering, including advanced air mobility, autonomy, artificial intelligence, materials, advanced manufacturing, and hypersonic vehicles.” said Kapania.
Kapania received his doctoral degree in Aeronautics and Astronautics from Purdue University, M.S. from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, and B.S. from the Punjab Engineering College, Chandigarh, India. At Virginia Tech he has taught courses related to aerospace structures and computational methods. His research interests are analysis and design of aerospace structures, computational aeroelasticity, composite structures, multidisciplinary analysis and design optimization, and machine learning. Kapania has published nearly 240 archival journal articles and more than 385 proceeding papers, a significant number of them at AIAA conferences. He has guided/co-guided 59 Ph.D. and 77 M.S. students and 20 Postdoctoral Fellows. Kapania has a long history of service to AIAA, serving on technical committees, two tours of duty as an associate editor of the AIAA Journal, as a member of the editorial advisory board of the AIAA Education Series, and as Faculty Advisor to Virginia Tech’s Design/ Build/Fly team. A winner of the AIAA/ISSMO Multidisciplinary Design Optimization Award (2016) and Boeing Welliver Summer Fellowship (1996), Kapania is a Fellow of AIAA and the Royal Aeronautical Society.
The Journal of Aircraft is devoted to the advancement of the applied science and technology of airborne flight through the dissemination of original archival papers describing significant advances in aircraft, the operation of aircraft, and applications of aircraft technology to other fields. For more information on the Journal of Aircraft, contact David Arthur, Senior Director, Publications.
