Every so often someone comes along ready to change the world. Aviation Week Network, in collaboration with Accenture, premier sponsor Hexcel and sponsor Boeing, has searched the globe for undergraduate and master’s degree students working to solve challenges within the aerospace and defense industry. A judging panel composed of hiring managers, engineers and academics evaluates and scores nominees based on academic performance, civic contribution, personal challenges and the value of each student’s research or design project. We have discovered 20 students who score high in all these areas and are on a course to change the future of aerospace and defense.
Today we celebrate the accomplishments and drive of 20 STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) students in their 20s. Nominated by their universities, the honorees were selected from an international eld of highly qualied students. This year’s honorees are top-ranked in academics, have articulated the value of their research and design projects, dealt with personal struggles and established record for giving back to their communities.
This year’s recognition program had a 34% increase in applicants over last year’s, with 12 new schools participating and ve new countries represented. The 2022 Twenty 20s also include an equal number of women to men with highly diverse cultural and demographic backgrounds. Every one of these students represents the future of aerospace and defense.
Joshua Ingersoll—M.A. International Science and Technology Policy – Space Policy | Class of 2022 | The George Washington University | B.S. and M.S. Aerospace Engineering | Class of 2019 | Georgia Institute of Technology
Ingersoll is tying together aerospace engineering and the impact of federal regulatory policy. As a graduate student, he researched the relationship between federal regulators, commercial Earth-observation companies and the U.S. Defense Department in the wake of recent changes to the Land Remote Sensing Act. He says the conict in Ukraine has highlighted the importance of commercially available Earth- observation data.
Ingersoll is a satellite regulatory engineer for Amazon’s Project Kuiper, where he conducts spaceight dynamics and radio-frequency interference simulations in support of the company’s regulatory efforts. He was a spacecraft systems engineer at The Aerospace Corp. and a systems engineering intern at Airbus- OneWeb Satellites through the Matthew Isakowitz Fellowship Program.