The Western Society of Engineers 2016 award dinner was attended by nearly 400 people, including Dr. Alan Cramb, AIME’s Representative on the Washington Award Commission from TMS (and Provost at IL Technical Institute), seen below wearing a red bow tie.

Dr. Aprille Joy Ericsson is the 2016 Washington Award recipient. Born in Brooklyn, NY, educated in the NYC public schools, and

later in Cambridge, Ma, Ericsson received her B.S. in Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering at the MIT. She received her

Masters of Engineering and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering at Howard University with an Aerospace option.

In keeping with the purpose of the Washington Award—recognition of devoted, unselfish, and pre-eminent service in advancing human progress—the Western Society of Engineers acknowledges Dr. Ericsson’s 25+ years engineering career the majority of which has been at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) in the Engineering Directorate. Dr. Ericsson has also worked at NASA HQs as a Program Executive for the Earth Science Enterprise and a Resource Manager for the Space Science Enterprise. For 10 years, she has been Instrument Project Manager (IM) for various instruments which include: the Near-Infrared Spectrograph on the James Webb Space Telescope, the Project Engineer for the Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter which launched April 2009, on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. For 3.5 years she served as the Deputy Instrument Project Manager for ICESat-2’s sole instrument the Advanced Topographic Laser Altimeter System (ATLAS), a $480M lidar instrument that will continue the important observations of ice-sheet elevation change, seaice freeboard, and vegetation canopy height begun by ICESat(-I) in 2003.

The Future City winners were:

1st Place Winners

St. Clair Junior High School, St. Clair, Missouri

"VILLE FALAISE"

Students:  Brooklyn Hyatt, Taylor Johnson, Mya McQueen, Connor North, Grace Smiley, Wyatt Strothcamp, Brianna Sullivan

Teacher:  Jennifer Hawkins

Engineer:  Angel Ramos

2nd Place 

Franklin Middle School, Wheaton, Illinois

"BASURATAGALOG"

Students:  Corgan Archuleta, William Cankar, Jordan Colton, Niku Cowart, Jack Dunbar, Katie Ellingsen, Evelyn Elmer, Gus Foster, Adin Gruenwald, Cassidy Howard, Devon Jones, Charlie Macris, Emma Plocinski, Deven Rae, Thilo Roelofs, Daniel Schierhorn, Caleb Tran, Zachary Tran, Sam Wakeman, Jayden Wilhelm, Ben Zimmerman, Samuel Zimmerman

Teacher:  Liz Simpson

Engineer:  Samuel Rae

3rd Place

Prairie Junior High School, Alsip, Illinois

"ALSIP"

Students:  Ryan Cook, Erol Ikiz, Canon Maranda, Troy Ohlrich, Taha Naveed, Adam Shaibat, Fahed Altermathy, Ethan Escorcia

Teacher:  Carol Baskas

Engineer:  Jeff Brubaker