Iain D. Boyd, associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Cornell, has been selected to receive the 1998 Lawrence Sperry Award of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA).

Conferred annually on a researcher under the age of 35 who is judged to have made the most outstanding contributions to aerospace sciences, the AIAA's Sperry Award will be presented to Boyd at the 36th Aerospace Sciences Meeting Jan. 12-15 in Reno, Nev. The AIAA is the largest professional technical society and information resource devoted to progress of engineering and science in aviation and space.

Boyd will be recognized for contributions to the development of the Direct Simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) technique for simulating non-equilibrium gas flows and its application to aerospace systems. His DSMC calculations have been applied to the modeling of spacecraft rocket plumes and to the early stages of atmospheric entry of spacecraft. In addition to their relevance to aerospace engineering, Boyd also has demonstrated the applicability of the DSMC techniques to problems in the manufacture of electronic materials, including vapor deposition and semiconductor etching processes.

Boyd joined the faculty of Cornell's Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering in 1993, after earning a Ph.D. in aerospace engineering from Southampton University and working four years as a research scientist at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Eloret Institute. He has introduced several new courses to the aerospace engineering curriculum at Cornell, and in 1997 he received the J.P. and Mary Barger '50 Teaching Award from the College of Engineering at Cornell. Boyd is a member of the International Advisory Committee on Rarified Gas Dynamics and serves as associate editor of the AIAA Journal of Spacecraft & Rockets.