NASA’S Marshall Center Honors Pompano Beach, Fla., Native Tannen Vanzwieten With Federal Women’s 2011 Outstanding Award

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — Tannen VanZwieten, a native of Pompano Beach, Fla., has received a Federal Women’s Program 2011 Outstanding Achievement Award from NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville in commemoration of Women’s Equality Day for outstanding professional achievement in supporting NASA’s mission with enthusiasm in a diverse and challenging environment.

VanZwieten is the aerospace engineer lead for the Controls Working Group in the Marshall Center’s Engineering Directorate. Appointed to the position in 2011, her team is responsible for the autopilot design analysis and integration for the Space Launch System vehicles. VanZwieten’s role includes managing the day-to-day technical direction of an engineering staff of approximately 15 engineers. She also is the civil service flight control design lead for SLS and has been jointly responsible for the development of the launch vehicle’s adaptive augmenting control algorithm.

The Federal Women’s Program 2011 Outstanding Achievement Awards recognize civil service employees in four categories — professional, administrative, supervisory and clerical — for exceptional service to the Marshall Center and the U.S. space program. Women’s Equality Day is commemorated each year on Aug. 26 by proclamation of the president of the United States to honor women gaining the right to vote.

VanZwieten and three other honorees received their awards Aug. 16 during Marshall’s Annual Honor Awards Ceremony where the center honored those who made significant achievements to NASA’s mission at an agency level.

VanZwieten began her NASA career in 2008 as an aerospace engineer. In that role, she was the task lead for development of a robust augmenting control algorithm for launch vehicles, and supported the Fast, Affordable, Science and Technology SATellite, known as FASTSAT.

She completed an eight-month detail at Kennedy Space Center in Florida in early 2011, supporting the Space Shuttle Program’s Marshall Resident Management Office. She developed a document describing the external tank processing from arrival to launch, written as a narrative with diagrams and photos to visually demonstrate key elements of each procedure.

Prior to joining NASA, from 2001 to 2008 VanZwieten held research/teaching assistant positions at the University of Wyoming in Laramie, University of Central Florida in Orlando, Florida Atlantic University in Dania Beach, the Universite’ de Technologie de Troyes in France and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency in Sagamihara. Her responsibilities included performing research in the area of dynamic modeling, simulation and control, and assisting with undergraduate classes such as vibration analysis and senior design projects on microsatellites and autonomous underwater vehicles.

She was a mechanical engineer at the Air Force Research Laboratory in Albuquerque, N.M., during the summer months from 2004 to 2006 as part of the Space Scholars Program. Her responsibilities included power system model development and simulation, data-based control in the presence of uncertainties and pursuit evasion games.

VanZwieten earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in ocean engineering from Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton in 2002 and 2003, respectively. She also received a master’s degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Central Florida in 2005, and a doctorate in electrical engineering from the University of Wyoming in 2008.

During her NASA career, VanZwieten was honored for her significant contributions in the advancement of the SLS flight control system design, and for outstanding initiative and engineering in support of the FASTSAT project Critical Design Review. She also is the recipient of Outstanding and Accomplished Performance Awards, presented each evaluation period.