Why Donate

Invest in Deep, Student-Centered Aerospace Research

When you support our research group, you do something rare and powerful: you buy time for careful, curiosity-driven scholarship—and you put that time directly into students’ hands.

Thanks to two generous donors, we’ve already accomplished work that typical grants rarely value:

• A full graduate-level textbook on flight simulation—written, refined, and used in the classroom.
  
  

• A pipeline to publish a new monograph on lifting-line theory, an old but still-essential pillar of aerodynamics.
  
  

• Dedicated time to prepare and publish unreleased work by Warren F. Phillips, preserving a valuable scholarly legacy.
  
  

These gifts didn’t fund gadgets or lab showpieces. They funded minds.

Why your gift matters

1) You fund time—not bureaucracy.
Universities today often chase large, short-horizon funding. That can produce activity without insight. Your gift lets us focus on the hard, slow thinking that advances the field.

2) You accelerate open, lasting scholarship.
We write books, release methods, and publish results that others can build on for years—not just one grant cycle.

3) You support students first.
We’re a computational group. We don’t spend heavily on hardware. That means your dollars go almost entirely to students and scholarship:

• $33,000/year funds a full PhD student.
  
  

• $25,000/year funds a full MS student.
  
  

4) You preserve a legacy.
Warren F. Phillips’s unpublished work deserves to be edited, archived, and shared. Your support helps ensure important ideas aren’t lost.

A better model for discovery

History is full of breakthroughs born from focus—not funding:

• The Wright brothers developed controlled, powered flight from a bicycle shop, driven by relentless experimentation rather than large grants.
  
  

• Gregor Mendel’s careful pea-plant experiments reshaped biology from a modest monastery garden.
  
  

• Srinivasa Ramanujan advanced mathematics through deep personal study, long before formal support arrived.
  
  

Great research often starts with conviction, careful work, and the freedom to pursue the right problem. That’s the freedom your gift creates.

What your gift makes possible (immediately)

• Student Fellowships
  Sponsor a graduate student to work full-time on flight simulation, lifting-line theory, or Phillips-legacy publishing.
  
  

  • PhD Fellowship (1 year): $33,000
    
    

  • MS Fellowship (1 year): $25,000
    
    

• Undergraduate Research Apprenticeships
  A semester of mentored research, code contributions, and paper prep: $5,000–$10,000
  
  

• Open Scholarship & Publishing
  Editing, diagrams, code examples, page layout, and dissemination for books/notes: $10,000–$20,000 per project.
  
  

• Travel & Presentation
  Student travel to present results and build networks: $2,000–$5,000 per trip.
  
  

• Phillips Legacy Projects
  Dedicated time to prepare, annotate, and publish Warren F. Phillips’s unpublished manuscripts: $25,000–$50,000 phases.
  
  

(Larger gifts can endow named fellowships or book series; we’re happy to discuss options and structure.)

Your return on impact

• Direct student support (stipends, tuition, and time on task)
  
  

• Citable outputs (books, open notes, code, and peer-reviewed papers)
  
  

• Named recognition (fellows, chapters, or series “made possible by…”)
  
  

• Annual impact brief so you can see exactly what your gift enabled
  
  

Join us

If this vision resonates—advancing aerospace by investing in people and ideas—please consider supporting our work. Your gift, at any level, multiplies into student careers, durable scholarship, and tools the community can use.

Let’s talk about a gift that fits your goals.
We can route contributions through the university and align recognition with your preferences (named fellowships, book acknowledgments, or project sponsorships).

Thank you for helping us do the kind of research universities were created to do.