Dr. Suzanne Weaver Smith began her career working in aeronautics and space R&D at Harris Corporation in 1980 with launch vibration modeling and testing of the Fine Guidance Electronics of the Hubble Space Telescope. There she also led integration of the ground communications systems and cross-country mobility testing of one of the first U.S. DoD unmanned aircraft systems. Her PhD (Virginia Tech, 1988) focused on vibration-based damage location for the International Space Station. She joined the University of Kentucky (UK) faculty in 1990 and is an award-winning researcher and educator.
In the early 2000's, Suzanne served as lead advisor on a NASA BIG BLUE Mars Airplane project to demonstrate feasibility of deployable wings for extraterrestrial exploration. She is the UK lead for CLOUD-MAP (Collaboration Leading Operational UAS Development for Meteorology and Atmospheric Physics), an NSF multi-university multidisciplinary research program integrating efforts of 16 engineering and science researchers and over 120 graduate and undergraduate students. The 2016-2019 CLOUD-MAP, 2017 Total Eclipse, and 2018 LAPSE-RATE flight campaigns provided ground-breaking operational, scientific and technology results for UAS sensing of atmospheric physics and weather forecasting. A new NASA ULI program, WIND-MAP (Weather Intelligent Navigation Data and Models for Aviation Planning) extends these results for unmanned traffic management (UTM) and urban air mobility (UAM).
Over 30 years at UK, Dr. Smith has successfully led grants exceeding $25M including single- and multi-investigator studies, multi-year projects with industry partners, and educational support for students. Her research portfolio illustrates her abilities to translate innovative results to valued industrial applications and economic benefit. Dr. Smith is also Emeritus Director of the NASA Kentucky Space Grant and EPSCoR Programs that provide start-up research support for early-career faculty and fellowships to students across Kentucky, advancing the state’s aerospace workforce pipeline. Her accomplishments and impact led to recognition as a National Science Foundation Young Investigator, with UK college and university awards for exceptional education, induction into the 2019 Kentucky Aviation Hall of Fame, and selection as a 2020 Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA).
Her husband, Bill, is a Kentucky native and University of Kentucky graduate. He is a professor in the UK Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. They have one daughter, Virginia, who is a PhD student in Aerospace Engineering at Virginia Tech.