Engineering students win NASA Blue Skies Award

Irvine, Calif., June 1, 2026 - A team of UC Irvine engineering students won honors from NASA for creating an innovative system for aircraft maintenance in NASA's Gateway to Blue Skies Competition.

The team won the Best Infographic Award for their excellent presentation and were one of eight national finalists who received $9,000 to research their solution for aircraft maintenance. The annual contest invites university students from across the nation to tackle an issue in the aviation industry.

The commercial aviation industry faces a shortage of maintenance workers and increasing demands to keep aircraft running for longer. Aerospace engineering Ph.D. student Vanessa Chung is an engineering intern at Jet Zero working on structural health monitoring for aircraft. She said that after discussions with industry professionals, they discovered there are structures on aircraft that are inspected only once in many years because the process requires time-consuming and challenging disassembly of the airplane's structures.

The team invented a solution: Their project, Air SHIELD, is an autonomous structural health monitoring system that enables the monitoring of aircraft parts without disassembly. It places sensors on the aircraft that are able to continuously detect, locate and classify damage in real time.

The team presented their Air SHIELD system to NASA researchers, airline professionals and engineers at NASA Langley Research Center.

"The feedback that we got was that it was the most innovative concepts of all the projects," said Chung. "They really see the value of the technology."

Their system integrates advanced sensing, physics-based simulation and machine learning models to enable early damage detection without having to disassemble the structure. The team estimates Air SHIELD will save $444,932 over an aircraft's lifespan and add 570 hours of flying time, while keeping aircraft safer and more available.

"Boeing really liked our proposal. It really aligned with what they're doing," said mechanical engineering senior Addison Rushing. She said that Boeing has been researching similar systems for a long time and anticipates other airlines will be interested in this technology as well.

NASA honored Air SHIELD with the Best Infographic Award. "Every single judge that came by told us how excellent our infographic was," said Chung.

"We have one of the most sophisticated ideas of the finalists, and we were able to simplify it so anyone can understand," said mechanical and aerospace engineering senior Bryce Mankovsky.

Chung said that many aircraft are turning to composite materials, which are lighter and stronger, but are more complex. The students tested their system on a composite panel where they dropped weights at a specific height for impact damage. They were able to use the sensors to track the damages as they occurred. Their system can be applied to these new aircraft materials and to rockets and bridges.

"The team did extensive work researching, interviewing industry professionals, testing and designing to come up with a robust novel structural health monitoring technology platform," said their faculty adviser, assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, Jacqueline Huynh. "The work serves as not only a method to reduce costs and uncertainty for aviation maintenance, but also as a future aircraft technology development enabler. I am very proud of this team and what they've accomplished."

The students are researchers at the UCI Aircraft Systems Laboratory, led by Huynh. "Professor Huynh supported us and gave us excellent feedback. This is the best lab I've been in. I came in without knowing anything about aviation," said Rushing who started working in the lab her junior year. "We forget that we're so blessed to have undergrad research programs. Most other schools in the competition were from senior design projects or clubs."

Bryce Mankovsky graduates this spring and will continue as a Ph.D. student in Huynh's lab. "Through my double major in mechanical and aerospace engineering, I've identified that I'm interested in creating solutions for aeronautics," he said. "I want to eventually help solve problems with CO2 emissions in the airline industry."

Jerry Chen, a third-year student majoring in mathematics and mechanical engineering, said that the Blue Skies project has given him an interdisciplinary perspective on integrating sensors and AI models into aircraft maintenance to improve flight safety. He plans to continue his research in the UCI Aircraft Systems Lab with a focus on contra-rotating propeller noise.

Rushing is glad to cap off her senior year with this award-winning project. "This has reinforced my desire to be in the aviation sector," said Rushing. "I'd like to make these technologies available to everyone. Engineers make it happen."

Huynh's lab focuses on creating solutions for future aircraft systems. She is delighted that the team was honored by NASA. Huynh said, "We are proud to demonstrate UC Irvine's leadership capability in tackling key challenges in aerospace engineering and the design, production and operation of future aircraft."