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by Erica Rodriguez Mejia, KOMO News
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OLYMPIA, Wash — An 18-year-old from Olympia has been awarded a $25,000 Davidson Fellows Scholarship for his engineering project aimed at enhancing aircraft fuel efficiency.
Kevin Shen is currently a first-year student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, planning to pursue aerospace engineering.
The project, titled "Taming the Oblique Wing: Improving Fuel Efficiency by Developing and Flight Testing an Oblique Wing Aircraft Utilizing a Novel Control Method," earned Shen the prestigious honor.
"I am grateful to be given a platform to share my work in aeronautics, and it has encouraged me to continue taking intellectual risks and create innovative engineering designs," Shen said. "I also hope that my projects can inspire others to build cool things and bring their ideas to life, no matter how crazy or impossible they may seem at first."
Shen's research suggests a promising path to improved aircraft efficiency, allowing planes to travel faster and farther while using less fuel, thereby reducing operating costs, lowering aviation's environmental impact, and minimizing noise pollution around airports.
Shen's innovative approach involved developing a new control method for oblique-wing aircraft. He designed and piloted an experimental model equipped with a custom-built flight computer and software, demonstrating that his method could stabilize the wing, according to officials.
The Davidson Fellows Scholarship program, a project of the Davidson Institute, offers college scholarships to students 18 or younger who have completed significant projects with the potential to benefit society in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, literature, and music.
Since its inception in 2001, the program has awarded more than $10.7 million in scholarships to 469 students.