December 13, 2012
Each semester, the Cockrell School of Engineering selects one student to receive the Outstanding Scholar/Leader Award. Payam Banazadeh, an aerospace engineering major, was selected as this year's recipient. Payam has interned at NASA-JPL for three summers and is working on a mission concept using small, inexpensive satellites (CubeSats) to search for planets outside our solar system. NASA has adopted his mission as its own.
Payam's post-graduation plans: "I will be working as a systems engineer at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory's state-of-the-art engineering facility, which is also known as Team X. After a year of gaining industry experience as a systems engineer at JPL, I plan to go back to school to receive my Ph.D. in aerospace engineering."
Watch a video of Payam receiving the award during the fall commencement ceremony.
