A Promising Future. Frank Kozel is seen here with Buzz Bomber, the vehicle he's helped design as a part of the SAE Club. The Florida native is one of two AE undergrads who were named to Aviation Week's 2019 20/Twenties list. The other AE honoree is Vaibhav Kumar. (Last year, another pair of AE students, Ken Smith and Nicholas Branch, were named to this prestigious list.)

Frank K. Kozel

The Aviation Week Network, in collaboration with the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), has announced that fourth-year Daniel Guggenheim School undergraduate Frank K. Kozel has been named to the 2019 Tomorrow’s Technology Leaders: The 20 Twenties list.

Kozel will officially receive the award from Aviation Week at ceremonies to be held in Washington, D.C. in March, 2019.

The 20 Twenties award annually recognize high-achieving aerospace students whose civic and or research contributions show promise. That's an apt description of Kozel, according to AE professor Brian German, who has supervised the undergrad's work at Tech designing and prototyping a quad-tiltrotor (the two co-authored a paper that will be presented at AIAA Sci Tech in January).

“Frank demonstrates a rare and amazing type of creativity and ingenuity, artistically blending his knowledge of aerospace theory with his honed practical skills in hands-on engineering," said German.

Prof. Brian German

"He has led and participated in the design, prototyping, and flight test of many novel and unconventional aircraft during his time at Georgia Tech. I have been amazed at his and his teams’ ability to do an A-to-Z design, build, and successful test effort in a very short time. Frank’s unique skills position him for an amazing career in technical leadership in the new era of aviation that we, as a society, are now entering.”

Officially enrolled as a BS/MS honors student, Kozel said he has always had an abiding love of planes and a deep-seated 'maker mentality'  -- two qualities that have defined his experience at Tech. For the past three years, as the chief engineer for Tech's entry to the SAE Aero Design-Build-Fly competition, he has spent countless hours in the basement of the Weber Building working on the team’s award-winning Buzzed Bomber. The UAV has made it to the top of the medal stand each year of the competition, if only because its engineers are obsessed with perfecting their work. This year, the SAE competition issued new rules, which means a complete aircraft redesign even more work for this year's submission.

Kozel's not complaining.

"I love hands-on engineering, and I am driven to do the best, so I love the unique culture of these competitions. They foster creative thinking and adaptive problem-solving and team work," he said. "When people ask why we [Tech] always win, it's no secret. We put in the time and effort to perfect good designs, test them in flight, and make improvements."

Long-term, Kozel plans to complete a master's degree and work for Toyota in their future mobility research group.

Sticking Together. Frank Kozel, far left, is seen here with AE alums Tom Neuman and Matt Warren, who worked with him at Toyota.

"Toyota knows that human mobility will change in the future, but we need to do more research on how it's going to work," he said. "I want to work with them because they have the knowledge base to be able to integrate the vehicles into people's lives."

Kozel's confidence in this career plan comes, in part, from the work he's already done for Toyota. During his first summer as an intern for the company, he worked with two GTAE alums (Toyota employees) to develop and build a full-scale prototype of a personal vehicle that they then presented to the company's president, Akio Toyoda.

"We met with him and his entourage in the executive parking garage of the Toyota North America headquarters and gave him a short presentation with the actual vehicle present," he said.

"We'd already presented it to the chief of Toyota engineering, but we weren't sure what he [Toyoda] would say. He wasn't expecting us. So we just tried to convey our seriousness, our willingness to work hard, and our desire to move forward. In two-and-a-half-months, we'd put together a full-scale working prototype. He listened to us, and he gave us feedback."

Kozel pauses and pulls a slip of paper out of his wallet.

Kozel carries this sticker - given to him by the legendary Toyota president, Akio Toyoda - in his wallet.

"And then he gave us this sticker. He only gave it to us because he was impressed with our work. That meant a lot."

That meeting translated to a second summer internship with Toyota, where Kozel was invited to work on a larger and more complex prototype in California. Kozel can't reveal any details of that prototype, but he talks excitedly about the internship experience.

"I played a support role on the major prototype, and I also was charged with a side project- retrofitting a slightly smaller vehicle to test subsystems and control systems present on the larger one. For that, I got to work with Mike Melvill, the first-ever commercial astronaut, and Burt Rutan, who is a well-known designer of unconventional general aviation aircraft."

Kozel stops a second to collect himself.

"I actually got to hang out and talk with him about design. He's pals with Mike Melvill. Incredible."

As exciting as that internship was, Kozel now has his sights set entirely on the future, where he is diving into electric VTOL for transition corridor research -- a subject that he will continue to study in graduate school. His work will seek to characterize the transition that vehicles make from hovering to horizontal flight.

"It's a very difficult thing to achieve, in terms of controls and air frames," he said in a deadly serious tone. Lightening up, he added: "And that's exactly why I love every aspect of it."

Prototyping the Future. This model of an electric vertical take off and landing (EVTOL) vehicle is at the center of Kozel's ongoing research with Prof. German.