Dr. Hank Pernicka, associate professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Missouri-Rolla, has been selected to receive the 2006 Outstanding Teaching Award from the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) Midwest Section.

In selecting Pernicka for the honor, the awards committee noted that he stood out from the three other candidates because of the strong written support his students gave him.

Pernicka is an active advisor to UMR students, providing guidance to both student design teams and student projects. He is the advisor to the MR SAT team, a group of engineering students that is working with the Air Force, NASA and industry representatives to design and construct two microsatellites; chief faculty advisor to the UMR Formula Race Car Team, which designs and races a prototype racing car for evaluation and possible production by a fictional automotive manufacturer; and Miners in Space, which has been selected twice by NASA to conduct reduced-gravity experiments on board NASA’s “Vomit Comet.”

Pernicka received his bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees in aeronautical and astronautical engineering from Purdue University in 1984, 1986 and 1990, respectively. He joined the UMR faculty in 2001.

His academic interests include astrodynamics, orbital mechanics, spacecraft design, spacecraft mission design, satellite attitude dynamics, nonlinear analysis, dynamics and control, and optimization. Pernicka is a member of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, American Astronautical Society, ASEE, Tau Beta Pi and Sigma Gamma Tau.