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2005 Emerald Honors Scientist of the Year receives Presidential Rank Award
By SS
Apr 16, 2007, 16:32

Isaiah M. Blankson, Ph.D., NASA Glenn Research Center

Dr. Isaiah M. Blankson, senior technologist at NASA’s John H. Glenn Research Center, received the Presidential Rank Award of Meritorious Senior Executive in October 2006. The President's Rank Awards recognize senior executives who have a record of extraordinary professionalism in their agency. 

In 2005, Science Spectrum magazine’s Minorities in Research Science Conference named Dr. Blankson Emerald Honors Scientist of the Year. He was also named to Science Spectrum magazine’s Top Minorities in Research Science list in 2006.

2005 Emerald Honors Scientist of the Year
By Science Spectrum
Sep 19, 2005
 
There are some achievers that cut across categories. How else could you explain an aeronautics Ph.D. who is a pioneer in magnetic levitation, novel applications to detect and resolve images from natural microwave emissions, and the use of exotic materials to build an entirely new class of turbojet-ramjet engines?

Isaiah M. Blankson studied aerodynamics at MIT, completing his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. there. He is a senior scientist at NASA Glenn Research Center, and he's a world-class, world-leading inventor of novel technologies for powered atmospheric flight, influencing the decisions of the U.S. military and civilian aviation authorities, NATO, and other researchers as far away as Moscow. In other words, he's a speed demon.

Dr. Blankson was hired at the General Electric Corporate Research Center in 1982, working with his first love: high-velocity airplane flight. He probed the mysteries of hypervelocity plasma-armature projectile launchers, developed a gas-dynamic design for high-power circuit breakers, and parsed the gas dynamics of high-temperature coating operations.

Next he joined NASA. In 1991, Dr. Blankson was named deputy director of the NASA Generic Hypersonics Program, serving as the overall program manager for a $28-million project to develop integrated, long-range research plans for a National Aerospace Plane and hypersonic flight guidance and control systems. He provided technical focus for the research and coordinated the agency's Hypersonic Research Plan with the Defense Department and the aerospace community.

He was promoted to senior technologist at NASA Glenn, one of the world's premier centers for propulsion research. Among more than 1,250 scientists and engineers, only 12 are senior technologists.

Collaborating with military researchers, he designed cruise missiles and aircraft concepts that can travel at between four and eight times the speed of sound. He also came up with an innovative strategy to develop smart, long-range hypersonic cruise missiles powered by air-breathing, hydrocarbon-fueled engines. Even at that, the Speed Demon was just getting started.

Dr. Blankson, already recognized by the Black Engineer of the Year Awards for his work with rocket-powered vehicles, is also a co-inventor of a brand-new kind of jet engine: the revolutionary "exoskeletal" design. Dr. Blankson holds patents for the engine and for his novel, ionized-gas power extraction technologies for turbine engines.

Dr. Blankson also works to prepare the next generation of scientists and engineers, not only by personally spreading the wealth of his knowledge, but also by building educational programs. He helped establish research programs and curricula at Hampton and Johnson C. Smith universities. Under the NASA Universities Center of Excellence Program in Hypersonics, he has been a technical monitor/management coordinator for the University of Maryland, University of Texas at Arlington, Syracuse University, and North Carolina A&T State.  He has also chaired the advisory visiting committee for Penn State University's Department of Aerospace Engineering and at the North Carolina A&T NASA Center for Research Excellence.

In one project, at Hampton University's Center for Aeropropulsion, Dr. Blankson collaborated and published results with researchers from Hampton and Russia's Moscow State University on high-performance nozzles and intakes across the speed range. Participants included specialists from GE Aircraft Engines and Penn State.

And just to keep things interesting, Dr. Blankson is also busy stretching the envelope in other research lines. As if jet engine work were not enough, Dr. Blankson has also delved into electronics. Dr. Blankson is developing passive, millimeter-wave technology that can exceed the capabilities of optical or infrared imaging. This has application possibilities for aviation safety, for closer watch on NASA spacecraft on launch, and for non-obtrusive scanning of personnel, a critical application for Homeland Security.

See why we call him a Speed Demon?

This article was published in Science Spectrum magazine, September/October 2005