Penn State Professor Receives NASA Early Career Faculty Award
Roshan Eapen, an assistant professor of aerospace engineering at Penn State, has been awarded NASA’s 2025 Early Career Faculty Award, which provides $677,267 over three years for his research.
The award supports university researchers whose work aligns with NASA's goals in space technology and exploration. Eapen is one of seven recipients selected from institutions nationwide.
His project, HJ-PRISM, aims to enable spacecraft to make autonomous decisions without constant Earth instructions by integrating machine learning with physics-based models. This approach seeks to create a decision map that allows spacecraft to perform efficient maneuvers and adapt to unexpected situations. Eapen plans to expand his research program at Penn State, involving graduate students and practical testing of the developed algorithms in realistic scenarios.
