Alumni Awards 2026

James Young III (AeroEngr BS’88, MS’89)

Jeff Zehnder — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 15:57:11 +0000

James Young III (AeroEngr BS’88, MS’89) Jeff Zehnder Wed, 03/18/2026 - 09:57

Outstanding Alumni for Excellence in Technical Achievement and Leadership
Over 40 Category

James “Jim” Young III graduated from the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences in 1988 with a BS and in 1989 with a MS. The last real glory years for ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� football. While at ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ��, Young earned his private and instrument rating at the Boulder airport, leading to his next 25 years in aviation.

Young is the chief experimental test pilot for Mmo Aviation Services Inc. He has been directly involved in experimental flight tests since 1991. He spent six years as a flight test engineer for several companies before transitioning to become a flight test pilot. For over 25 years, he has been a FAA Designated Engineering Representative Flight Test Pilot and Flight Analyst for all aircraft categories and light helicopters, one of few DERs to be dual qualified.

Young has participated in two Type Certificate Programs and over 250 Supplemental Type Certificates (STCs) programs. He has over 14,000 flight hours in 200 different aircraft types and has 14 type ratings. He has tested aircraft from small Cessnas to the Boeing 747 super jumbo. He has also flown worldwide as a corporate and airline pilot and holds commercial glider and floatplane ratings, as well as an instructor license.

Over the past two decades, Young has specialized in performance and handling qualities testing, primarily in transport aircraft, including highly modified aircraft. He has performed every type of test required for FAA certification. Young has completed numerous high risk tests, including dive testing, flutter clearance and spin testing. He has experienced unpredicted divergent pitch response, control reversals, unmodeled aeroelastic events and multiple departures from controlled flight.

Flight test highlights include: first flight of the Lockheed Martin F-35, CATBird B737 testbed, 777 and G-V initial certification, Aviation Partners winglet programs, multiple aerial fire tankers, multiple special mission/ISR modified aircraft, and Head of State VIP completions.

Young is an associate fellow in the Society of Experimental Test Pilots and serves as a member of their foundation board, as well as serving on the membership and editorial committees.

Young and his wife, Jana, are both active in supporting ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� aerospace engineering program. They sponsor senior design projects and provide regular consultation with the students. Young also helps students build professional networks while still in school and continues to provide mentorship and networking opportunities after graduation.

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Colonel James Voss (Ret.) (AeroEngr MS’74, Honorary PhD’00)

Jeff Zehnder — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 15:54:44 +0000

Colonel James Voss (Ret.) (AeroEngr MS’74, Honorary PhD’00) Jeff Zehnder Wed, 03/18/2026 - 09:54

Outstanding Alumni for Excellence in Public Service
Over 40 Category

Jim Voss is married with one daughter. He graduated from Auburn University with a degree in aerospace engineering, and from the University of Colorado Boulder received a master’s degree in aerospace engineering and an honorary doctorate.

He is a retired Army Colonel. Voss served as an infantryman, taught at West Point, attended the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School, and worked as a flight test engineer at Edwards Air Force Base. He was an engineer at the Johnson Space Center before being selected for the Astronaut Program in 1987.

Voss has flown on five space missions and has conducted four spacewalks. After living on board the International Space Station for 163 days, his total time living and working in space is 202 days.

His last role with NASA was in the Space Station Program Office. After leaving NASA, he became associate dean of engineering at Auburn University, where he taught classes on human spacecraft. He then worked in private industry as vice president for three different companies with responsibility for developing human spacecraft.

Voss spent the last 15 years of his career teaching classes in the Aerospace Engineering Sciences Department here at ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ��. He retired in 2025 and now spends his time flying and working on his experimental airplane.

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Erica Rodgers (AeroEngr BS’98, MS’00)

Jeff Zehnder — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 15:52:16 +0000

Erica Rodgers (AeroEngr BS’98, MS’00) Jeff Zehnder Wed, 03/18/2026 - 09:52

Outstanding Alumni for Excellence in Public Service
Over 40 Category

Dr. Erica Rodgers serves as the associate director for national security space at the University of Colorado Center for National Security Initiatives, where she provides strategic vision, programmatic leadership, and operational oversight. She is a senior space strategy and technology leader with experience across government, industry, and academia.

Most recently, Rodgers served as Director of Advanced Programs for NASA’s Office of Technology, Policy, and Strategy, where she was a founding leader of the agency’s strategic analysis capability. In this role, she helped shape U.S. strategic direction for space missions, delivering more than 75 high-impact analyses that informed lunar science and exploration, commercialization of the International Space Station, and international space norms through the Artemis Accords. Previously, she led interagency technology partnerships across the U.S. government advancing critical capabilities in autonomy, cyber resilience, and in-space servicing, assembly, and manufacturing through NASA’s Office of the Chief Technologist.

Rodgers has over 25 years of expertise in spaceflight mission execution and operations, space science research and instrument development, systems engineering, space mission concept design, and human exploration architecture analysis. Her career includes managing satellite operations at a semi-remote NOAA tracking station in Alaska for Lockheed Martin; systems engineering of architectures and missions for the Aerospace Corporation and Spectrum Astro; scientific research and engineering at the Space Science Institute, the Geophysical Institute, and the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics; and teaching astronomy and astrophysics at several colleges and universities.

She serves as vice chair on the board of directors for the Space Science Institute and on strategic advisory boards for the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� and for the Center for Space Science and Engineering Research at Virginia Tech. Dr. Rodgers earned her PhD in space physics from the University of Alaska Fairbanks and her BS and MS in aerospace engineering from ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ��.

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Bryant Loomis (AeroEngr MS’05, PhD’09)

Jeff Zehnder — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 15:50:14 +0000

Bryant Loomis (AeroEngr MS’05, PhD’09) Jeff Zehnder Wed, 03/18/2026 - 09:50

Excellence in Technical Achievement and Leadership
Over 40 Category

Bryant Loomis received his MS (’05) and PhD (’09) degrees in aerospace engineering sciences from ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ��, and his BS (’03) in engineering from Hope College. His graduate work focused on the first numerical simulations of a dual-pair satellite configuration equipped with a laser ranging interferometer (LRI) for measuring Earth’s time variable gravity field.

At the time, this instrument was in development through a NASA-funded collaboration between ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� and Ball Aerospace, and led to the technology demonstration LRI on the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment Follow-On (GRACE-FO) satellite mission, which launched in 2018 and is still operating.

Following graduation, Loomis joined the Planetary Geodynamics Laboratory at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) as a contractor with SGT, Inc. In 2016, he transitioned to the newly formed Geodesy and Geophysics Laboratory, where he then became a NASA civil servant in 2017.

Since 2022, he has served as Chief of the Geodesy and Geophysics Laboratory, which manages NASA’s Space Geodesy Project; develops and operates geodetic lidar instruments including LVIS, GEDI, and the Hazard Detection Lidar; and has critical roles supporting a wide range of NASA Earth Science missions including ICESat-2, GEDI, GRACE-FO, TOPEX/Poseidon, Jason-1/2/3, Sentinel-6A, and EDGE, which was recently selected for flight under the Earth System Explorers Program.

In addition to his duties as lab chief, Loomis has led research efforts under a variety of NASA programs, resulting in the development and application of novel mass change science products derived from the GRACE missions and satellite laser ranging (SLR), where the SLR record is one of the longest climate data records of the space age, dating back to the 1970’s.

Research programs have included the GRACE and GRACE-FO Science Teams, High Mountain Asia Science Team, Sea Level Change Science Team, Ocean Surface Topography Science Team, and Solid Earth Team. He is part of the GRACE-FO and GRACE-C Science Data System teams, the NASA/ESA MAGIC Working Group, and leads NGA-funded gravity field development.

Loomis is a member of the NASA Solid Earth Team CORE 2.0 Committee and serves as an associate editor for the Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth. He is the recipient of multiple awards, including a NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal in 2020 and a Robert H. Goddard Exceptional Achievement in Science Award in 2016.

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David Klaus (AeroEngr MS’91, PhD’94)

Jeff Zehnder — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 15:39:16 +0000

David Klaus (AeroEngr MS’91, PhD’94) Jeff Zehnder Wed, 03/18/2026 - 09:39

Outstanding Alumni for Excellence in Technical Achievement and Leadership
Over 40 Category

Given a one-year leave of absence from his job as a spacesuit engineer at the Johnson Space Center, Dave Klaus came to ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� in 1990, intending to pursue an MS in aerospace and then return to NASA. Thirty six years later, he is still here, now as a professor emeritus, after retiring last May.

Upon acceptance to the graduate program, Klaus was offered a research assistantship with BioServe Space Technologies. This opportunity set his path toward a PhD in motion, where he conducted experiments on bacterial behavior in microgravity as part of the BioServe’s first seven Space Shuttle missions. He would remain with ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� long enough to see the 100th BioServe launch in April 2025.

While a grad student, Klaus developed and taught a new course aligned with his biological research interests and prior work background, called Space Life Sciences. Following graduation and a one-year Fulbright postdoc at the German Institute of Aerospace Medicine in Cologne, Klaus returned to BioServe.

The biophysical model governing how gravity affects bacterial growth that he developed in his dissertation and refined during the postdoc was published in a 1997 paper that continues to be regularly cited in space microbiology literature.
Having worked as a shuttle launch controller, in mission operations, and with BioServe payloads, the only experience he was missing was going to space himself. Klaus made it to the final rounds of the astronaut selection process in 1998 and 2000. When that goal didn’t pan out, he became a professor, the best job “on” Earth, and established the Bioastronautics Focus Area in the aerospace department.

Throughout his teaching career, he shared his passion for bioastronautics – the study and support of life in space – with well over a thousand graduate and undergraduate students, as well as with colleagues who are now carrying the torch going forward.

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Jonathan Fentzke (AeroEngr PhD’09)

Jeff Zehnder — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 15:33:29 +0000

Jonathan Fentzke (AeroEngr PhD’09) Jeff Zehnder Wed, 03/18/2026 - 09:33

Outstanding Alumni for Excellence in Commercial Enterprise
Over 40 Category

Dr. Jonathan Fentzke is a pioneering force in the entrepreneurial ecosystem, translating scientific expertise into business success. He has founded three companies, secured tens of millions of dollars in funding, and achieved a notable exit with OmniEarth’s 200% year-over-year growth in just three years.

His technical innovations have yielded six patents and dozens of publications, establishing him as a thought leader at the intersection of aerospace technology and commercial applications.

Fentzke has also devoted his talents to mentoring over 500 companies and 1,000+ founders, earning recognition as an “All Star Mentor” in the top 1% of Techstars’ global network. As co-founder and general partner of Far Out Venture Capital, he is fueling innovation through strategic investments in promising ventures, including several founded by fellow ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� alumni.

The impact of his guidance is best illustrated by companies like Seasats, which attributes securing over $100 million in contracts largely to his mentorship. Fentzke blends technical excellence, entrepreneurial vision, and an unwavering commitment to lifting others as an entrepreneur and catalyst for the larger innovation community.

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Dylan Boone (AeroEngr MS’11, PhD’13)

Jeff Zehnder — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 15:31:35 +0000

Dylan Boone (AeroEngr MS’11, PhD’13) Jeff Zehnder Wed, 03/18/2026 - 09:31

Outstanding Alumni for Excellence in Technical Achievement and Leadership
Under 40 Category

Dylan Boone is the Navigation Team Chief for the Europa Clipper Mission to Jupiter at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He has worked on development for Europa Clipper since 2016, through launch in 2024 and into current interplanetary operations.

His experience on prior JPL missions includes orbit determination for Cassini, orbit determination for the New Horizons Pluto mission, and Independent Navigation Team Lead for the New Horizons mission to Arrokoth (Kuiper Belt Object MU69).

He came to the University of Colorado Boulder in 2009 as part of the aerospace department’s second cohort of Smead Scholars and received his PhD in aerospace engineering sciences in 2013. He earned his bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering and a master of engineering in space systems from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor in 2009.

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Andrew J. Adams (AeroEngr BS’91, MS’93)

Jeff Zehnder — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 15:25:23 +0000

Andrew J. Adams (AeroEngr BS’91, MS’93) Jeff Zehnder Wed, 03/18/2026 - 09:25

Outstanding Alumni for Excellence in Public Service
Over 40 Category

Dr. Andrew J. Adams (Andy) is a distinguished leader in national space systems and cybersecurity, with over 35 years of service in the US Air Force (USAF) and NASA. After receiving his BS and MS (Aero/Astro) from ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ��, Adams was commissioned as an officer in the Air Force. From 1993 to 2004, he supported numerous space flight test programs. After graduating from the USAF Test Pilot School, Adams then served as a Test Flight Engineer, culminating in his role as Flight Test Director for the Global Hawk UAV program at Edwards Air Force Base in Southern California.

After earning his PhD in Imaging Science at the Rochester Institute of Technology in 2008, he led the Advanced Technology Division at the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) from 2008 to 2012, rapidly advancing next-generation imaging systems to bolster space-based intelligence capabilities. From 2012 to 2015, Adams served as a liaison between US Strategic Command and the NRO, aligning sophisticated space intelligence efforts with national security priorities. Following his retirement from the Air Force as a Lt. Col., he served as the director of NASA’s Mission Resilience & Protection Program from 2015 to 2025 at Goddard Space Flight Center, where he implemented innovative cybersecurity and counterspace strategies for over 60 NASA missions.

Adams is now supporting the Aerospace Corporation as a senior advisor on the future space enterprise at the NRO. His foundational contributions during his military service and at NASA underscore his commitment to advancing space system capabilities and protecting our national interests.

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