Riley Fitzgerald named Ryan and Krista Frederic Junior Faculty Fellow
Riley Fitzgerald, assistant professor of aerospace and ocean engineering in the College of Engineering at Virginia Tech, has been named the Ryan and Krista Frederic Junior Faculty Fellow by the Virginia Tech Board of Visitors.
The Ryan and Krista Frederic Junior Faculty Fellowship in Aerospace and Ocean Engineering was established by the generous gift by Ryan and Krista Frederic. The endowment supports the work of faculty in the Kevin T. Crofton Department of Aerospace and Ocean Engineering to generate new interest in space-related engineering challenges.
Fitzgerald will serve as the Frederic Junior Faculty Fellow for a five-year term.
In his two years at Virginia Tech, Fitzgerald has built a research group of eight graduate researchers and has graduated seven directly advised master’s degree students. He has also advised more than a dozen undergraduate research students for academic credit. He was nominated for a 2024 Annual Academic Advising Award.
Fitzgerald has kindled a rapidly rising research program in astrodynamics, orbit determination, cislunar operations, and space systems engineering. His dedicated efforts have already earned NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate Early Career Faculty Grant, and he has been selected for the Virginia Space Grant Consortium Young Investigator Program.
Fitzgerald is a member of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. He received a bachelor’s degree from Princeton University and a master’s degree and Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
