 Outstanding scholars who are also committed to increasing the success of black engineers. Those selected as BDE fellows are all actually currently attending and they're attending a virtual four day workshop that will provide opportunities for scientific interactions, career-oriented discussions and networking. My name is Arvind Raman, I'm the executive associate dean of the College of Engineering here at Purdue, a professor of mechanical engineering and by court scene materials engineering. And it is my honor to introduce the moderators for today's keynote talk. Dr. Tahira Reed-Smith is an associate professor in the School of Mechanical Engineering at Purdue and is a NASA visiting scholar. The research involves the quantification and integration of human-centered considerations in engineering systems and or the design process. The research program has received funding from the National Science Foundation, Procter & Gamble, the Air Force Office at Scientific Research and many others. For projects that involve the intersection of diversity in mechanical engineering have been featured in media sources including National Geographic, NBC's Today's show, Essence Magazine, Reuters, NPR and many others. A highly sought after role model for the under generation, Dr. Reed-Smith's story about her double Dutch jump rope invention is featured in two children's books and was on the 2017 New York State English and Language Arts Common Core exam administered to over 100,000 fourth graders in the state of New York. Dr. Reed obtained BS and MS degrees in mechanical engineering, the Rental Air Polytechnic Institute and a PhD in design science from the University of Michigan Ann Arbor. The second moderator is Dr. Michael Mike Harris who is the Robert B and Virginia B professor of chemical engineering and professor courtesy by courtesy of environmental and ecological engineering in the College of Engineering at Purdue University. He served as my colleague associate dean of engineering for undergraduate education from 2006 to 2017. He was inducted into the University of Tennessee's Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering's Hall of Fame in 2017. He received the National Science Foundation Career Award. He was a Purdue University faculty scholar from 2002 to 2007 and was named fellow of ASEE and fellow of AICHE in 2009. He won the AICHE Grimes Award for Excellence in Chemical Engineering in 2005 and the AICHE Minority Affairs Distinguish Service Award in 2009. He's the author of approximately 100 peer reviewed publications and 11 patents. He received his BS in chemical engineering from Mississippi State University and his MS and PhD degrees in chemical engineering from the University of Tennessee while working full-time at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Mike's research is in the area of nanomaterials, collides, and interfacial phenomena, transport for transport phenomena, particle science and technology, microwave sensing of pharmaceutical powders, solidification of drug and excipient matrices, environmental control technology, and electro dispersion precipitation processes. Please join me in welcoming our moderators to introduce our speaker for today. Good evening. Here's Agira and Mike. Good evening, as Arvin said, I'm Mike Harris and I'm honored to introduce our keynote speaker for this evening, Dr. Wes Harris, the CS Draper Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He received his PhD in 1968 from Princeton University. His first faculty positions were in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Virginia. And he also served as a faculty member of physics at Southern University. Professor Harris joined MIT as an associate professor of aeronautics and astronautics. And he served as the director of the Office of Minority Education for several years, all of these, at least these two were at MIT. He held a position as manager of computational methods at NASA headquarters. And as you can see, he's been a pretty busy person. He was promoted to professor of aeronautics and astronautics at MIT in 1981. And he was the president and owner of Harris Analytical and Planning from 1980 to 1985. I mean, these are all just tremendous accomplishments. He returned to MIT as the ML King Junior Visiting Professor and became the CS Draper Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics in 2001. His administrative roles include serving as the School of Engineering Dean at the University of Connecticut, Vice President and Chief Administrative Officer of the University of Tennessee Space Institute and an Associate Administrator for Astronautics at NASA headquarters. He was also head of the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics and Associate Provost for Faculty Equity at MIT. Most recently, he is the founding director of the MIT Hypersonics Research Team, which has been in existence since 2015. He has won numerous awards and I will only highlight a few of them. The Sigma Psi Distinguished Lecturer, he won the Outstanding Advocacy Award from MIT's Council for the Advancement of Black Students. He won the Presidential Award from the National Organization for the Professional Advancement of Black Chemists and Chemical Engineers. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He's also an African Scientific Institute Fellow, American Helicopter Society Fellow, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Fellow, and he's a member of the National Academy of Engineering. And as I said, these are only some of his awards. His research specializations and interests include areas such as unsteady aerodynamics, aeroacoustics, rotorcraft technology, defense systems acquisition, lean financial management methods, sustainment of capital assets, and sickle cell pathology. Thus you see the breadth of his research interests. Please join me in welcoming Professor Wesley, or Wes Harris. And by the way, you have a wonderful last name. Professor Harris, Professor Smith, Professor Rahman. Thank you very kindly for allowing me to have a conversation with you and our friends throughout the country on this occasion. Having been around when NSBE was founded, our organization, the tip of the spear for us in engineering, my heart is warmed by this opportunity to share this evening with you. When first asked, I was overjoyed and certainly said yes. Then I asked myself, well, what should I attempt to communicate? What should the message be? I discarded for this presentation any presentation on statistics, how many African American women are engineers, how many African American men are engineers, how many latex, Latino men and women are engineers. That data is interesting. I think it's somewhat static. So I decided not to go there. What occurred to me to share with you are successes, outstanding successes. And the next chart, please advance the next chart. Yes, join us. At the next, no. Sorry, there we go. Okay. I want to talk about success and I want to talk about excellence in that success. Somehow I was able to cross path with three outstanding African Americans in engineering. They're listed there with Joe Whitlow, James Hubbard, Patrick Handel. I've been blessed to have the opportunity to work with these young men in producing high quality scholarship. There's obviously a void, a hole that I'm still trying to fill, namely, Wes, when will you direct a PC thesis of an African American woman? So I'm still trying to make that happen. But this evening, this evening, I want to talk about Whitlow, who has matured to be, as far as I'm concerned, a leading aerospace researcher and manager. I want to talk about Jim Hubbard, who is an academic and inventor. If you just count the letters in Jim Hubbard's name, multiplied by five, you still won't have as many enough numbers to cover the number of patents he has produced. And then I have a Monday, top three, Patrick Hanley, who I describe as a entrepreneur, second to none. You take a look at the dates on this chart, they cover a decade. Whitlow finishing in 1979, Hubbard in 81, and Patrick Hanley in 89. So there's a lot of seasoning for me, a lot of learning for me that occurred in that decade. As reflected in the dates in which these young men receive their PhDs, they are now seasoned individuals. Their world line, their success is well documented. And I'd like to go back to the source of that success in terms of what actually occurred at MIT. How were we able to work together to bring out their greatness, their gifts? And I hope to summarize that in the final chart, bring home the essence, their high quality. What are the points that these three young men have in common that led to such great success? Now, before I get jumped into Whitlow, Hubbard and Hanley, I would like to just share with you how, what was the pivotal thing in my life? What happened to Wes that led him to the point where he crossed paths with Whitlow, Hubbard and Hanley? What's the source? So in the next chart, I'd like to do that. Start with that on the next chart. Okay, so the source. Okay, I'm in its oldest dirt, so I was born in Richmond in 1941. Richmond was, and maybe even still is, a southern segregated city from top to bottom, from north to south, from east to west. On the chart on the far left, you have an entertainer and his wife buying a home in the 40s in Richmond. All right, and that's what a home looked like in the 40s that black folks bought, okay? Look at the gentleman. He has a jacket on, he has a tie on, his wife is neatly dressed, and they're happy to walk into that configuration, but that's what the best we could do. The middle chart confirms the racist school system that we had. When I started to school, it was in a wooden building, George Mason Elementary School. The second year, the J. Andrew Bowler School opened. It had previously been white, a white-only school. That school, J. Andrew Bowler, was made of quarry stone, 22 inches thick. And in the center chart here, you see youngsters for the very first time, black ones, going into J. Andrew Bowler Elementary School. That was my second school. By the way, to get to that school, as well as to get to George Mason Elementary School, we walked from our black communities through a hostile white community, and that was an experience in itself. That's how we got started. From education to healthcare, the chart on the far right was taken at Central State Medical Facility. That's a black brother at Central State that's supposed to be treated for a mental illness. Take a look at his surroundings. Grab ahold of what it is that he had to do, put up with just to breathe, much less medication than care. But that's good old Virginia, good old Richmond. That's where I grew up. The next chart continues with this source conversation. So the upper right, I'm sorry, upper left, you see young black girls reading books. You see a black woman preparing to wash some dishes and a white woman sort of directing. Getting an education, getting a book was a real challenge for us growing up in Richmond. It was rare for a black person to act alone when it came to basic understanding, basic grab and hold of knowledge. On the lower left, we have a Congress of Brothers, all black, celebrating the last person in Richmond to be inducted into the military for the beginning of the Second World War. And it was an achievement, colleagues. It was an achievement to be so selected at all. So the last person selected was, what's it called, pleaser. The chart on the right, Sam Gladden and his brother. Sam Gladden, my age, we play football together at Armstrong High School. Sam is the brother on the left side of that chart. So those of you who have been through the South recognize what they're doing. They're in the center of Richmond up on Lee Street. Summertime, trying to keep cool. That's not a swimming pool, colleagues. That's where horses go to drink. That's where horses go to drink. It was not a public pool. So that's what our recreation, guys. Next chart, okay. On the four left, you see black young women getting serious about some academics and some activity that will draw out their artistic interest. There's probably an age distribution with those young women. I won't go into that, but then appear to be of a different age, maybe between the three of them, a difference of four to five years. But they are together working. The middle chart. That is a brother delivering textbooks to the black community. We were not allowed to enter the Richmond Public Library. So we had to travel around and push hearts with books in order to better serve the black community. My mother and father paid taxes. They worked and taxes supported the public library, but we were not allowed into the public library. Now the chart on the four right is a band director at a public school and you can see our youngsters playing various instruments, music, understanding, practice, writing music, living music has always been a part of us. And we've found a way to make that happen even under the darkest, most dire situations. Okay, next chart, please. Okay, so in all of that chaos and all of that racism and all of that segregation, there was a flowering of strength and excellence. Okay, I'm still in high schools where I went to get my final public school training before college. What a wonderful experience. What a foundational experience. What an electric experience. Profound, absolutely profound. Mrs. Brown, Dr. Brown received a PhD in biology and she taught biology at Almsong High School when I was there. Rosier Diamond obtained her master's degree in mathematics from Columbia University. She taught me solid geometry, plain geometry, Boolean algebra and calculus in high school. Eloise Bows Washington, I listed her as in bold and underscored in physics. Eloise Bows Washington went north to Universal Pennsylvania in the late 40s to earn a master's degree in physics. Came back to Richmond, teach in the public schools. And YB Williams obtained his PhD in history and taught history at our high school in Richmond. So the mathematics, the social part concerns of biology, the physics all were a part of the excellent, the foundational, the motivational elements that propelled me to better understand the world and the opportunities that were presented. Lucille Brown, Rosier Diamond, Eloise Bows Washington and YB Williams, just a snippy of the high quality teaching, mentoring, directing, guidance, love and care that was provided at Almsong High School totally segregated every single textbook we had in that school was a hand me down from the white schools. Sometimes the pages will be torn out. Sometimes the end work will be written all over the pages but we made it work. We made it work. Next chart, please. Okay. And this for me is one of the pivotal events of my life. In the spring of my junior year, I built a cloud chamber and my mentor, my director was Eloise Bows Washington, my physics teacher. We wanted to actually observe the collision of alpha particles with water droplets. Hence the cloud chamber, the black cloth on the bottom, the top was visible, you could use a camber and actually collect, actually take photographs of the collision dynamics of alpha particles with the water droplets. We built the chamber within Almsong High School. We collected the dry ice we needed to generate the clouds, all of which we did within Almsong High School. This was before internet, you couldn't look up how to do this. We knew what we needed to do and we built this cloud chamber. All right, so we built a cloud chamber. Then we go planting right down to the Black High School of Science Fair. It wins first place. It wins first place at Virginia State College. Of all the high schools in the state of Virginia, black ones that participated, that project was first place in physics. Okay, so I thought we were done. Ms. Washington said, Wesley, you're not done. We go to the White High School of Science Fair at the University of Virginia. Okay, so Ms. Washington, Eloise Bowles Washington, I salute. I say, yes ma'am, let's go. We came in third. We came in third in physics of our cloud chamber at the White High School of Science Fair on ground, the University of Virginia. That disturbed Mrs. Washington greatly. She tried her best to defend me and said it wasn't my fault. Said it was her fault. Said we came in third, not first. But she said, Wesley, sit down. I wanna talk to you. Number one, you will go to University of Virginia. You will go for three reasons. One, your blackness. Everyone at that university will look at you and will not be confused about the fact that you are an African-American. Number two, second reason for going, you will achieve, you will do well. And the third reason, and this is the piece, was so important to Mrs. Washington and she presented to me in such way that it became important to me, that you will demonstrate to white people excellence and scholarship. This was the pivotal moment in my career. That meeting, that sit down Wesley, we will now go forward and this is how and why. The whole idea of excellence and scholarship followed by and above black folks. So as I'm concerned, came to me through the other ways both Washington. And I had no fear. Once Mrs. Washington said, do it, I get complete confidence that I would be, I am prepared to do so. This for me was critically important. Okay, so that's the background folks. The rest of how I got to MIT is in material, but this is foundational. Eloise Bows Washington, a cloud chamber, excellence rewarded within the black community, but not recognized in the white community. Eloise Bows Washington says, Wesley, we take this as an opportunity. You will demonstrate to them, white folks, excellence and scholarship. Next chart, please. Okay, so now I wanna talk about these guys who I showed me what scholarship really was about. Didn't had no idea it was this high level when I was at UVA. Whitlow. Whitlow Peninsias PhD at MIT in 79. The title of his PhD thesis is, the application of the method of parametric differentiation to two dimensional transonic clothes. We'll talk a lot about that in the next several charts. James Hubbard, the academic, the innovator, the gentleman with an on length of patents. Okay, a long thesis, but let me make sure I read every word of it. Dynamic pressure in velocity trends of a model helicopter rotor enhancing blade slap, a high angle of attack and two tip speeds. 1981, excuse the language, but that turned out to be a hell of a thesis. And if you just slowly go through the title of that thesis and ask what are these words? What do they mean? How are they related? What was this gentleman really about? What was the state of technology when he was doing this? How many breakthroughs are involved? And then Mr. Hanley, Mr. Patrick Hanley, the entrepreneur of the three. And you read his thesis slowly as well. A multi-domain pseudo spectral solution for general frequency, unsteady transonic small disturbance equation. Okay, underscore general frequency, not just low frequency. Okay, arbitrary, it's time to go. 1989, so let me try to unpack these three achievements and then come back and summarize the character of these three gentlemen. Next chart, please. Okay, so this is a photograph on the upper right of Woodrow Whitlow. Probably when he was still in grade school, he doesn't look that way now, but that's Whitlow. Okay, so Woodrow Whitlow, he's born in weird in a place called Inkster, Michigan. That's a city built by Ford Motor Company, primarily for blacks who worked at Ford. Came to MIT as an undergraduate state for his master's in PhD. Very fine gentleman. In every sense of the word. We worked together on his PhD thesis at a time when computation fluid dynamics was just emerging. There were some schemes that were very slow, did not capture the shot correctly, et cetera. So, Woodrow decided that if we really want a design algorithm where we want to be able to better understand the impact of angle of attack, for example, the thickness ratio, that is the thickness to length of the airfoil, the reduced frequency, all rapidly are the shocks moving on the upper surface of the airfoil, for example, or the pitch and heat frequency, and of course, buffering. So, what Woodrow did was put, used this method of parametric differentiation embedded into his developed CFD code that proved to be faster, more accurate, more robust than existing at that time, CFD codes. Now, Woodrow Whitlow left us at MIT. His first location was NASA Langley. And from NASA Langley, he moved to other locations within NASA. He was the director of the NASA Glenn Center in Cleveland. He was the essential NASA employee that led NASA to recover from the Columbia accident. He was at Cape Canaveral at that particular time. Following that, he ended up at his last job at NASA, was working in the administrator's headquarters. And if you Google, Woodrow, you'll see all sorts of activities involving him and NASA. Okay, to his left is a photograph of a transonic flow, a schematic of transonic flow over an airfoil. And it's probably not legible, not big enough for you to see, but that's the kind of problems he was working on. What is the location of that shockwave? How rapidly is it oscillating? What is the Buffett effect? And how do I put another, how do I examine another shockwave of a different ratio, of a different angle of attack? He integrated all of that into his code. And what you see on the lower side of the right chart is I think that's 737 MAX, but those planes don't have Buffett anymore. Certainly Bowen has his own codes, but Woodrow made his contributions as well. Next chart, please. Okay, on the upper right is Professor James Herbert. He is our academic and our innovator. During the Korean War, the US forces were losing helicopters, right frequently and by the opposition, simply observing and with a hand pistol, being able to shoot the tail rudder, the helicopter becomes unstable and crashes. And he could do this without any instrumentation, right? That's the human ear. The human ear is all they needed to distinguish which type of helicopter it was approaching and from which direction it was approaching. So no complications. That's the human ear and a four to five caliber pistol or maybe even less. So how do you handle it? What is the problem? What were they doing? What were the opposition doing? They were listening to the acoustic signature of the helicopter. Hueys, Chinooks, they all may have a different acoustic signature. So if you want to manage the problem of losing these helicopters, you've got to adjust the acoustic signature. And there are many types. There's broadband noise, rotational noise and there's blade slap. Blade slap. What is that? Now I would imagine, James Herbert asked himself, what is the source of the noise? And how do I measure the source of the noise? He probably asked himself, what is the noise propagation pattern? What's the envelope of the noise? And third, what does it look like? Physically, what is the rotor blade actually doing? Where is the wake shed it by that rotor? And what happens when the rotor blade passes through that? A very, very difficult problem. You're in a laboratory, an air court chamber. You have rotating blades. You ask the question, what is the loading on those blades? Okay. First part of the question, will this instrument the blade? Uh-oh. What do you mean instrument the blades? It's rotating. How do I get those measurements into the laboratory frame? Remember now, this is still, we're approaching 1981. How do you do this? Slip rings. What? No, go slip rings, right? So he's got to build a blade. He's got to measure the loads on the blade and he's got to transmit that load through slip rings to the laboratory system, laboratory frame. He also wants to see, actually observe that blade slashing through a vortex. How do you set that up? How do you use strobes to do this? So for the first time in aerodynamics, we're able to understand, to measure the source, simultaneously measure the acoustic propagation before field noise and visualize the intersection on the tip of the roller blade with the trailing vortex. So this was an achievement colleagues that still stands as a reference. And for as I'm concerned, we define, public define the limits of blade slap onset. He's gone on to be quite successful. He is a Hagler fellow at Texas A&M University. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering. He is the father of smart structures. He made similar contributions in industry as well as at the University of Maryland and College Park and at Langley. A true superstar. I'm so proud to have met him and work with him and could call him not only a colleague, but a friend. Next chart. Okay, so this is my entrepreneur. This is Patrick Handling. St. Kitts and Nevis out in Atlanta. Oh, by the way, I forgot to tell you, you probably saw it on a chart. James Herbert, Danville. Okay, so I'm from Michigan, he's from Danville. The generation, two, three generations older. But you can imagine what it was like in Danville as well. So Herbert has seen some, the better, the worst side of human interaction as well. Okay, so St. Kitts, Nevis for Patrick. Patrick is a little bit different from Whitlow and from Herbert. Whitlow and Herbert earned all of their degrees at MIT, baccalaureate, masters and PhDs. Patrick Handling came to us from NYU, I believe, to join us. So he earned his baccalaureate degree in New York. Came to us with a background already in acoustics. For a very good, excellent applied mathematician, understood transonics, jump deeply into nonlinear, unsteady transonics, where the problem is inherently nonlinear. There is no linear problem of any value at all in the unsteady nonlinear transonics problem. Unsteadyness, whatever you're talking about. But what do you mark with? The frequency of these changes. The frequency of these changes. And notice what he's doing in a multi-domain pseudo-spectral solution, not CFD, but a pseudo-spectral solution. Wonderful job. So as I'm concerned, the most efficient solver are high-frequency nonlinear transonic flow over airflow sections, certainly for his time. Patrick has gone on to build companies. He's also had a great fortune of working in companies owned by other, or founded and owned by other MIT graduates. And I think if I'm not mistaken, that company's been bought and sold for a considerable amount of money. Okay, next chart. This is my last one. Whitlow, Hubbard, Hanley. What are their gifts? What made the difference? In my old age, I've identified six qualities, assets, gifts that these three young men share. Extremely high intelligence. All of them went right through the MIT PhD requirements, hidden home runs at every step of the way. They understood their research, their PhD research. Well-posed problems, each of them, knowing when they have solved the well-posed problem. High intelligence, fearless. I mean, these guys would run through brick walls. Nothing would intimidate them. Nothing would make them afraid. I really mean that. In the MIT environment, and these gentlemen will tell you, we had our black group of researchers. Okay, Martin Landau came from Sweden. He had a Swedish mafia of graduate students. Trillin and Walkman had the Israeli mafia of graduate students. So we worked together as African Americans. We had a couple of white students in there, and certainly East Asian students. We were fearless, we were fearless, back down from no challenge. These gentlemen were resourceful, pick on either one of them, and ask, how did you get this done? It wasn't lying around for you to just pick it up and do it. What resources did you actually use to do this? How did you figure out you needed to go lay the slip rings, for example, in Hubbard's case? How do you do this? How do you be resourceful? Okay, self-confident, and I don't mean cockiness. I mean, these young men were prepared due to hard work, and they showed their self-confidence. They stood with their heads up, their shoulders back, their chest out, and stomach in. They were self-confident and were never afraid of any intellectual challenge that came their way. Resilient, absolutely. Knocked down, uh-uh, I'm getting up. And last but not least, intentional. Intentional about excellence in scholarship. Mrs. Eloise Bowles Washington, with marvel at these young men achievements. So for NSPE, my objective tonight this evening is to share with you some of the strength that I've observed in our Blacks young scholars. It's been an enormously rewarding journey for me. These young men are still contributing to the advancement of scholarship. They're some of the strongest I've ever met. And it's been my blessing to have met them. Thank you. Thank you so much, Dr. Harris, for that inspirational and just very awesome presentation. We have a few minutes left, and we have about eight minutes left. And so I'd like to open up the floor for any questions. If you have a question, please raise your hand. Also, let's give him a virtual applause. You should have a reaction button, I think, and you can, there you go, thumbs up, hearts. Let's give him an applause. Thank you. Okay, so I see Leo Green has his hand up for a question. Please go ahead, Leo. Yes, excellent, excellent talk. Very motivational. I have a question regarding one of your statements that you mentioned in your storyline at the beginning, and it had to do with demonstrating excellence in scholarship to white folks. And I wonder if that latter part has changed over years, over your years, demonstrating excellence to a specific group. Yes, Leo, it has changed. There's no question about that. So you remember that story, right? I was under the spell, let's say, of Eloise Bowe's Washington. This was an African-American woman that went north in the 40s for some strange reason to earn a master's degree in physics at the University of Pennsylvania. Imagine what she had to go through in that experience, Leo. In order to solve going north to Philadelphia, what would she do when she wanted to get her hair affects? And was she asked to set in the back of the classroom, earning her peace, earning her master's in physics? Would she do all of that and came back to Richmond? And for that generation, as well as mine, the idea was how do you produce scholarship that was absolute that white folks would accept? I mean, that's what motivated the scientists of that era. And it has changed since then. But remember now, this was my junior year in high school when Ms. Washington, Eloise Bowe's Washington, just sat down, you got to talk. Thank you, I love it. All right, I didn't see who was first, but I'll just go and order Kajumba then John Jenkins. Oh, thank you very much for the wonderful presentation. My question is about the last, like the long here you have told us about intelligence and theorists. Mine goes on the theorists. When you look at the current trend, if you are kind of theorists, they take you to be someone who is not respectful. So how do you find a balance between being theorists and the specter at the same time? Okay, so how do I balance being fearless with the other part of your question? Are there a point in being respectful, like respecting people? Yeah, all right, yes. Okay, so let me put theorists in context. I don't mean being voracious or having guns or knives or sticks or anything of that sort. I mean, having an inner strength that you are prepared to face adversity. And it can come from a relationship with your advisor. It can come from going down a dark alley in terms of your research and you hit a stone wall. You got to find a way around that. Just not being afraid, having confidence in yourself based on preparation that you will in fact not cop out and be a chump, but you're going to stay there and get the job done. I think that is being respectful. I think that's saying to the world and to oneself that I believe that I really do have faith that we'll get this done. So, and that's how I'm using the word fearless, okay? And it's not a rubber rouser. No, it's the inner strength to face challenges. I would like to say this. I think one of the most important things about a PhD were three things, one, money. You got to support students. Two, the research topic. And three, the quality or the relationship between the student and the advisor, okay? Paramount, if any of those three are out of order you can have a very, very difficult time if not impossible. Two people, a group of folks getting together, trying to do research. You got to be fearless to make that happen. John? Hey, how you doing, Wes? Good to see you. Good to see you as well. I missed the early part of your talk, but I got it in the middle of the Harvard show there and it's, I want to comment on your fearless description. I think, you know, mentors and mentees as you were describing the relationship is just so very important. And I think you were a pioneer, Wes, and I would, I'd maybe describe things, maybe we'll use some other adjectives, tenacious, relentless, just when you, I just say, when you run into an obstacle, you consider it a temporary setback. You say, okay, what's the way around this? And just the tenacity that I observed in Wes Harris as a young man has stuck with you through your career. And I think it was a contagious disease apparently because your mentees, likewise, I see as being very tenacious and willing to take a long view and work hard to get the job done even if there are obstacles. So I think this tenacity is, perhaps I would describe it, your fearlessness has, it implies tenacity in my opinion. Thank you, John. Those of you so assembled, Professor John Junkins is the president of Texas A&M University. We go back more than 50 years when we shared a small office together at the University of Virginia in the Department of Aerospace Engineering. So we've been bumping around into each other for 50 years. He's a very modest gentleman, so he would not tell you that he's president of A&M but he is. And he's also an outstanding researcher and achiever of the first magnitude. It puts me to shame when we compare his production, his productivity to mine. Okay, I don't see. We haven't bumped into each other on the basketball court in about 40-something years. So the beginning of our bonding, I think, even though we shared an office, that helped us out a little bit. Yeah, it did, it did. I just have to say, I know we're just about out of time, but thank you, Dr. Junkins, for your time with us. And I also want to acknowledge two of Dr. Harris's former students that are here quietly in the background. I see Patrick Hanley here and James Hubbard. If you want to unmute and just say a few words, we welcome that. Otherwise, yeah, you should say some words. You guys are amazing. So please, Dr. Hanley and Dr. Hubbard. This is Jim Hubbard. I'll say a few short words. I've been under the spell of Wes Harris for 40 years. I would like for everyone here to know that Wes talked about aerodynamics. But what I love about Wes is he's not like most engineers. Most engineers engineer some specific system or technology. I want you to know that Wes Harris engineers, engineers, okay? He built me from the ground up. I was a violin kid living in Baltimore, Maryland, never heard of MIT. And Wes Harris flew to my house in a bad neighborhood and talked to my mama and got permission to spank me if I misbehaved. My final statement about Wes is, you know, there's a great Chinese saying, a superior man. It's long, but one of the statements in there says, and seeking no recognition, recognition never leaves him. And that's my advisor and mentor, Wes Harris. And I'm done. I'm out. Good, Jim. Thank you. Dr. Hanley, putting you on the spot. Would you like to say a few words? If you're talking, you probably are still muted. I don't know. He's trying to talk. Is he still here? Oh, there he is. Okay, are you muted? Your volume is a little low. Can you get a closer to your mic? I'd like to say that Professor Harris was mentorship back in Donald's, speaking from Phyllis. I remember when I was going to Professor Harris's office with a problem, what he would say, you can do that, can't you? And when I said I can do it or not, I had to always say yes, I can do it, and just come back and actually do it. I don't know where the signal has came from, but just start to dance and how we can solve problems and how we can approach not only the technical aspect of the program, but other people and how to take advantage of all the resources at MIT. In the end, I had other people in mathematics and aeronautics just to get the problem done and just on Professor Harris's advice and wisdom and personal help led to all of that. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Carira, may I recognize Barrett? Yes. Is this left? No, is he? Oh, there he is. Professor Cardwell. He's an MIT product as well. We bumped into him or to each other when he was obtaining his baccalaureate degree at MIT. Thank you. I have to say that Professor Harris was extremely influential to me, partially because he was scary. He was not just fearless, he was fear inducing. But one of the things that became the most important to me, remember that for me as a black undergraduate at MIT, which with all due respect to my aero astro colleagues at Purdue, is still perhaps the greatest aero astro program ever created. And I actually got to see a faculty member who looked like me as an undergraduate. And he told me not to work with him just because he looked like me. If I worked with him because I was interested in unsteady fuel, in transsonics, in rotorcraft, unstable dynamics, those were great things. I was in space systems, so no. But that lesson of being excellent was something that made it possible for me to be a faculty member and to be a mentor and a representative to other people because I had Professor Harris to watch. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Dr. Harris, thank you so much again. We have a session, a closed session right after this. I do invite all the BT fellows, Dr. Wesley Harris, Dr. James Hubbard, Dr. Patrick Hanley and you as well, Dr. Barrett Caldwell to stay on. And other faculty that will, Dr. Castillo, stay on for the Q&A, but everyone else, we thank you for your time. The recording will be available soon and you can watch the replay, but we have a closed session after this. Thank you for your time.