Clarkson University Associate Professor of Mechanical & Aeronautical Engineering Pier Marzocca was recently recognized with the Forest R. McFarland Award by the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) at the 2013 AeroTech Congress & Exhibition in Montréal.

The award recognizes individuals for their outstanding contributions to developing, collecting and distributing technical information of value to society members through meetings, conferences and professional development programs.

Marzocca serves as the chair of the SAE’s Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) Advanced Technologies Technical Committee, which is focused on gathering and disseminating knowledge on unmanned aircraft.

At AeroTech, Marzocca organized a symposium for UAS, which included 12 sessions and about 50 papers and presentations dealing with a variety of topics, including micro aerial vehicles, safety, certification and standards, materials, structures and manufacturing, flight sciences, propulsion, and guidance, navigation and control.

Marzocca also co-moderated with Ruxandra Botez, professor at the École de Technologie Supérieure of Montreal, a panel of experts discussing missions and operations on civil and military UAVs. Marzocca says that as unmanned operations become more prevalent the need for coordinated and intelligent cooperation becomes increasingly important. The panel focused on technologies related directly to cooperative systems.