UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — A team of 10 undergraduate students from Penn State’s Department of Aerospace Engineering has earned third place in the undergraduate category of the Vertical Flight Society’s 43rd Annual Student Design Competition for its innovative hybrid-electric tiltrotor aircraft design.
Known as Penn State Urban Air Mobility (PSUAM), the team was challenged to explore how hybrid-electric propulsion could be integrated into NASA’s XV-15 tiltrotor research aircraft. Sponsored by Leonardo Helicopters, the 2025-26 competition received 17 proposals from universities across four countries. PSUAM completed its work as part of AERSP 402, the department’s Rotorcraft Capstone Design course taught by Edward Smith, distinguished professor of aerospace engineering, and Sara Lego, an associate teaching professor of aerospace engineering.
"I’m really proud of this team," Lego said. "Watching students grow — not just in their technical knowledge, but as confident decision-makers and teammates — is one of the most rewarding aspects of teaching the aerospace capstone courses for me. The PSUAM team overcame their initial frustrations with the design constraints to learn how to build on one another’s strengths and approach this design as a cohesive, collaborative team. That’s especially gratifying to witness over the course of a year-long project, and this time it resulted in some well-deserved recognition for these students’ hard work."
The competition’s request for proposals challenged students to develop a hybrid-electric vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) aircraft using the XV-15 as a baseline while balancing vehicle performance, weight, cost and system integration requirements.
Over the course of the year, the students developed two concept vehicles, Cygnus and Cygnus X, which explored different propulsion architectures for the XV-15 and considered subsystem modifications needed to accommodate a larger passenger payload while meeting demanding mission requirements.
"Every design choice on a complex vehicle like an aircraft impacts everything else; any one change will cascade through the entire system," Lego said. "So, the team had to both investigate each modification individually and then combine their skills to perform aerodynamic, stability and control, propulsion and performance analysis at full vehicle level to ensure that they still had a feasible, achievable design that would meet the mission’s ambitions requirements."
The team’s year-long effort incorporated a wide range of aerospace engineering disciplines, including aircraft performance modeling, propulsion architecture trade studies, drivetrain design, structural and aerodynamic analysis, rotor optimization, stability and control assessments, and cost and risk evaluations.
Through those analyses, the students developed two innovative and viable approaches for adapting the research aircraft to hybrid-electric flight. Their work required them to consider not only the technical performance of the aircraft, but also how changes to one subsystem could affect the vehicle as a whole.
"The impact of the capstone was very beneficial to my education as it taught me the experience of collaborating through challenges and dealing with the ups and downs on a months-long project but still being willing to successfully complete the task at hand," said David Rigoglioso, who graduated with a bachelor of science degree in aerospace engineering this past spring and now works at Boeing. "We wanted to do well in the competition, but that never put unnecessary pressure on us since we just focused on enjoying showing up every day and working with each other which elevated the capstone experience. Seeing our group's success praised is a bonus on top of the experience."
The project also gave students the opportunity to apply concepts learned throughout their aerospace engineering coursework to a complex, open-ended design problem similar to those faced by engineers in industry and research.
The Vertical Flight Society’s Student Design Competition is sponsored by leading aerospace organizations and companies, with the sponsorship rotating among Airbus, Bell, the Boeing Co., Leonardo Helicopters, Sikorsky, a Lockheed Martin company, and the DEVCOM Army Research Laboratory.