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Vertical Flight Society Announces Winner of 2024 Alfred Gessow Best Paper Award

Selected from 21 Finalists for Best Paper from Forum 80

Fairfax, Virginia — The Vertical Flight Society (VFS) announces today the winner of the Society’s prestigious Alfred Gessow Award for the best overall technical paper presented at the 80th Annual Forum and Technology Display. This year’s winning paper is from the Safety Session entitled, Scenario-Based Helicopter Flight Simulation of Accident-Prone Vortex Ring State (VRS) Encounters, by Eleni Sotiropoulos-Georgiopoulos of the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech).

Sotiropoulos-Georgiopoulos graduated with a Master of Science in Aerospace Engineering from ISAE-SUPAERO and Georgia Tech in 2022. She is currently pursuing a PhD at the Georgia Tech Aerospace Systems Design Laboratory (ASDL), focusing on the use of flight simulators for vortex ring state accident prevention. Her research is conducted at the FAA William J. Hughes Technical Center’s Cockpit Simulation Facility/Vertical Flight Aviation Simulation Technologies Laboratory, experimenting with their six helicopter and electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) flight simulators. The work presented in her paper was performed in partnership with Loft Dynamics, Georgia Tech, the Vuichard Recovery Aviation Safety Foundation and Sophrodyne Aerospace, and incorporated input from Airbus Helicopters, Robinson Helicopter, ONERA—The French Aerospace Laboratory, and the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA). Sotiropoulos-Georgiopoulos will present the winning Alfred Gessow paper at the 50th Annual European Rotorcraft Forum (ERF), taking place Sept. 10–12, 2024, in Marseille, France.

The best paper selection process, which began in October 2023, was very rigorous. Out of some 350 abstracts received, the Society’s 22 technical committees selected the best abstracts, with 274 papers published. During the Forum, the session and technical committee chairs then selected the best papers from each of the technical committees to be considered for the Gessow Award. Then the Society’s Deputy Technical Directors for Aeromechanics, Vehicle Design, Vehicle Integrity, System Integration, Systems Engineering, Operations and Product Support winnowed that number down to six finalists. Following that, the VFS Technical Director and a committee of technical experts reviewed and ranked the papers, and in that ranking, determined that the selected Gessow paper was the best of the best. 

All of the best papers are available for purchase in the Vertical Flight Library & Online Store (www.vtol.org/library). The full list of all the Forum 80 best papers (with links):

In addition, the History Committee recognized The Dirigible Helicopter: Korean-American Inventor Young Ha Koun's Ambitious attempt to Make Aircraft Survivable in the Event of Loss of Control, by C. Sundiata Cowels, Future iNCITE!, as the winner of the Bernard Lindenbaum Best Historical Paper.

Forum 80 was held May 7–9, 2024, in Montréal, Québec, Canada. Forum 81 will be held May 20–22, 2025, in Virginia Beach, Virginia. 

Founded in 1943 as the American Helicopter Society, the Vertical Flight Society today is the international professional organization that advocates, promotes and supports vertical flight technology. For more than 80 years, the Society has provided global leadership for the advancement of vertical flight.

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