On 5 October, AIAA and the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) welcomed AIAA Fellow Marilyn J. Smith of Georgia Tech as she delivered the 2026 AIAA-NAE Yvonne C. Brill Lecture in Aerospace Engineering, held in conjunction with the NAE Annual Meeting. Her lecture, “Rotorcraft: The New Frontier in Extraplanetary Exploration,” made the case that helicopter-style flight is opening new ways to explore other worlds.
When NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter lifted off on Mars, it proved that rotorcraft can fly on another planet, reaching terrain that wheeled rovers can’t. Building on that success, NASA’s Dragonfly mission is heading to Titan, Saturn’s moon, where it will explore the moon’s unique atmosphere from the air.
Smith is the David S. Lewis Professor of Aerospace Engineering in the School of Aerospace Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology. She is directs Georgia Tech’s Vertical Lift Research Center of Excellence (VLRCOE), where she leads a seven-university team of experts in vertical lift research for the U.S. Army, U.S. Navy and NASA. She has partnered with the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) to successfully win multiple research funding mechanisms for both organizations that total more than $200 million.
Smith has long been active in AIAA as a member of the Fluid Dynamics Technical Committee and an Associate Editor of the AIAA Journal. She has been recognized by the Institute with the 2022 AIAA Aerodynamics Award. Smith is also Technical Director Emeritus and Honorary Fellow of the Vertical Flight Society and a Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society.
