Innovators of tomorrow: Two students named 2025 Astronaut Scholars

Jama Green

1 Oct 2025

Maggie Campbell and Kevin Xu proudly showcase their VT hand gesture in front of astronaut suit in Houston. — Maggie Campbell (at left) and Kevin Xu celebrated with the Class of 2025 Astronaut Scholars at the Innovators Symposium and Gala in Houston. Photo courtesy of the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation.

More than 60 years ago, the Mercury 7 astronauts cemented their status as pioneers of space exploration – scientists and engineers who pushed the boundaries of innovation and exploration.

Created in 1984 to honor the original Mercury 7, the prestigious Astronaut Scholarship Foundation recently announced that two Hokie engineers are among its Class of 2025 Astronaut Scholars.

Margaret "Maggie" Campbell and Kevin Xu joined an elite group of 74 students from 51 universities across the globe honored by the foundation with a scholarship up to $15,000, an invitation to an Astronaut Scholar conference, mentorship, professional development, and networking opportunities.

Maggie Campbell receives her award at the Innovators Symposium and Gala in August. Photo courtesy of the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation.

Margaret "Maggie" Campbell

Hometown: Norfolk
Class year: Senior
Major: Ocean engineering, with a minor in naval engineering
Campus involvement: Human Powered Submarine team, student leader for ExperienceVT, Rising Sophomore Abroad Program (Spain and Morocco), member of Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers and Society of Women Engineers, aerospace and ocean engineering ambassador, and participant in the accelerated undergraduate/graduate degree program.

At a glance, Campbell isn’t your typical Astronaut Scholar. She doesn’t have aspirations to build rockets, satellites, or rovers to explore the Moon, Mars or beyond. Her interests lie in another relatively unexplored environment: the ocean.

As an ocean engineering major, Campbell hopes to design vessels that allow scientists to fully explore the harsh, unpredictable, and unforgiving environment below the surface, then return home safely.

As an undergraduate research assistant in associate professor Christine Gilbert’s lab, Campbell and the team are studying the effects of repeated slamming on small watercraft. They are collecting data on pressure and the propagation of water across a model hull in the Virginia Tech Tow Tank, which aims to reduce the effects of slamming waves and ultimately extend the lifespan of watercraft and improve crew safety.

As hydrodynamics lead engineer of the Human Powered Submarine Team, Campbell is responsible for the subteam designing and delivering a high-performance hull that is both hydrodynamically optimized and safe for the pilot. When it’s time for the vessel to dive beneath the surface, Campbell’s role as dive coordinator is to ensure the divers know their job and the safety protocols to keep everyone safe 20 feet underwater.

Maggie Campbell and others in the David Taylor Model Basin at Naval Surface Warfare Center Carderock. — Virginia Tech's Human Powered Submarine team won runner-up for best overall performance at the International Submarine Races in June 2025. Maggie Campbell (at center) and her teammates made 17 successful race attempts throughout the week. Photo courtesy of NAVSEA.

Campbell is a Department of Defense SMART Scholar and will be placed at the Naval Surface Warfare Center Carderock Combatant Craft Division after graduation to work on small vessels. Down the road, she hopes to see advances in research and exploration eventually bridge the gap between sea and space, as the two share many similarities.

“Recently, NASA launched the Europa Clipper, a spacecraft which will explore Jupiter’s ocean moon,” Campbell said. “Europa’s icy surface covers a vast ocean which is believed to be capable of supporting life. Based on findings from the Europa Clipper, NASA will start the design of submersibles capable of exploring those ocean depths. Someday, the skills of an ocean engineer will be needed to explore whole new oceans both within our solar system and beyond.”

Kevin Xu

Hometown: Blacksburg
Class year: Senior
Major: Aerospace engineering with minors in math, chemistry, and piano
Campus involvement: Rising Sophomore Abroad Program (Norway, Finland, and Japan), president of Archimedes at VT, aerospace and ocean engineering ambassador, and Team ASTRA member/advisor.

Xu likes things that fly fast and go boom.

In the field of aerospace engineering, most explosions are avoided at all costs – except when it comes to propulsion. Xu is perpetually drawn to the science behind massive engines burning exotic fuels to generate immense thrust, moving people and payloads around and beyond Earth.

At Virginia Tech, he immersed himself in propulsion-based undergraduate research. Early on, he worked in the Stability Wind Tunnel under Research Associate Professor Aurelien Borgoltz and Research Assistant Professor Nanya Intaratep, qualitatively observing and mapping regions of turbulence via oil-flow and fluorescent-tuft flow visualization techniques.

In Sevak Tahmasian’s lab, Xu researched passive wave-powered propulsion, building a controllable wave generator in two weeks and testing wave-powered surface vessels with 150 combinations of fin angles, lengths, and materials.

These hands-on experiences led to his current work at the Advanced Propulsion and Power Laboratory under Professors Todd Lowe and Wing Ng. Particle ingestion, such as sand and dust, is one of the main factors leading to engine degradation and reducing performance over time. Xu and the team are exploring improvements in engine cooling to allow for long-duration sand ingestion tests, as well as designing and constructing blast shields to protect test cell, instrumentation, and electronics during engine runs. The work aims to improve performance and extend the life of jet engines for both commercial and military operations.

Kevin Xu with his research rig, the High-Speed Wind Tunnel at the Advanced Propulsion and Power Laboratory. Photo courtesy of Kevin Xu.

For someone fascinated by things flying high and fast, it’s no surprise Xu also joined Virginia Tech’s NASA Student Launch team. The undergraduate design team competes in an annual NASA-sponsored competition and is currently constructing a reusable dual-deploy launch vehicle capable of reaching an apogee of 5,000 feet.

As a mechanical engineer on the payload subteam, Xu was tasked with designing a system that would deploy locking legs to support the entire payload. After a year of brainstorming and failed prototypes, he was determined to get it right. He spent hundreds of hours on his computer, in the lab, and in design meetings with his teammates to prove that a locking system was indeed feasible. The hard work paid off when the team successfully designed, built, and validated a spring-pin mechanism that locked behind the legs after they had swung down.

The perseverance through failure and teamwork he's learned from hands-on experiences tackling complex research will propel him through graduate school and beyond.

“Propulsion systems are at the bleeding edge of human knowledge in science and engineering,” Xu said. “However, the world requires better propulsion systems in the near future — ones that are more powerful, more efficient, and more environmentally friendly, to not only keep up with the aerospace missions of tomorrow but also preserve our planet for generations to come.”

Since 2017, only 10 other Hokies have been honored as Astronaut Scholars, including Arianna Krinos, Jim Owens, Christine Faunce, Terelle Cadd, Lennon Headlee, Timothy Proudkii, Brandon Tapia, Lucy Waite, Stephen Argauer and Chloe Nyhart.