FEATURED ALUMNI By Kelly Pratt
Alum Joins ‘Transportation Revolution’
Grad Puts Theory to Work
For Alfonso Noriega (’11, ’16) the agile and hands-on environment at startups give him the ability to break new ground in dynamics and controls engineering.
At Bell, Donovan Curry (’10, ’13) is part of a team pushing the limits of technology to reimagine the future of transportation and autonomous flight.
“Everything we are working on now — from the avionics, the flight controls, the control law, autonomous navigation, to the battery and electric motor technology — will be used to set the foundation for a transportation revolution,” he said. As an engineer specializing in control law development, Curry is part of an innovation group conducting R&D for military and commercial projects, such as the Bell Nexus air taxi and the Autonomous Pod Transport. While most of his experience prior to joining Bell in 2019 involved larger business aircraft for Cessna and Gulfstream Aerospace — Curry found his work in static loads, flight dynamics, and control laws easily complements Bell’s specialty. “The key to making UAM energy efficient is to design a VTOL that flies an aircraft in forward flight,” he said. “I think my background in airplane control law design and Bell’s history of helicopter design match well in bringing the two philosophies together.” A native of the Bahamas, Curry’s passion for aviation began with plane spotting from his grandparents’ home located near the final approach at the Lynden Pindling International Airport. Early interactions with pilots and crew as an airline intern introduced him to aerodynamics and controls. At Embry-Riddle, Curry went on to earn his bachelor’s degree in Aerospace Engineering and master’s in Mechanical Engineering. The theories he learned in class were applied at the Eagle Flight Research Center, where among memorable projects, a team designed a control law algorithm for a RC SkyWalker. It was his first introduction to drone work and developing an autopilot system using a microprocessor. “There were hardware limitations and we burned out a few boards with bad wiring,” he recalled. “But sometimes the simpler ideas worked best. The airplane did eventually fly and navigate to waypoints, but there were hard lessons to learn, lots of compromises and lots of iterations.” Now on the cusp of helping UAM become a reality, those early design lessons still ring true today in real-world applications, he said.
“It’s extremely satisfying knowing that you’re solving problems that haven’t been solved before. Watching an aircraft take off autonomously, fly around, and come back with code that we programmed is very rewarding,” he said, recalling his time at Acubed, an Airbus venture that produced Vahana, a self-piloted electric UAM technology demonstrator vehicle in Sunnyvale, Calif. Noriega — the university’s first Aerospace Engineering Ph.D. graduate — gained experience in this type of bold testing environment at the Embry-Riddle Eagle Flight Research Center. By the time he completed his doctorate degree, he had instrumented a Cessna 182 with sensors and a computer that allowed him to tap into the aircraft’s autopilot and feed it guidance commands to essentially “fly itself.” For his first job out of college — under the wing of two alumni who own Flight Level Engineering — Noriega wrote flight control software for a rare Ryan Navion, a variable response aircraft that exposes pilots and engineers to different flying characteristics and control systems. Now working as a guidance, navigation, and controls engineer at Archer, a UAM startup, he is part of a team developing an eVTOL. The Palo Alto-based company aims to provide a sustainable and safe alternative to traditional surface transportation. Since joining in January 2020, Noriega, who is also a private pilot, has participated in developing Archer’s flight control system and is involved in testing and feedback discussions related to its design. Embarking into a new technology sector means there isn’t always a blueprint for a way forward, Noriega said. But that’s where a problem-solver mindset and the engineering basics he learned at Embry-Riddle continue to serve him well. “If you know how the theory works, you can apply it to make something fly in a different way. I think that’s the key when you’re trying to build something that doesn’t exist yet,” he said.
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