August 2014

Dr. Melanie Violette Distinguished Service Award (presented by Larry Gintert)

Dr. Melanie Violette received the Distinguished Service Award for her leadership and individual contributions to the Handbook on August 6, 2014.  Dr. Violette consistently displays an awesome blend of education, knowledge, skill, work ethic, personality and attitude to the team and has been invaluable to the development and publishing of Volume 6 Sandwich Structures.  Her professional experience spans more than 20 years of combined industry, academic and regulatory technical roles including her current FAA assignment in Seattle.  She pioneered innovative approaches to analyses and certification of primary sandwich structure on commercial aircraft and successfully transitioned much of that knowledge to the Handbook.  Her contributions include the Co-chairmanship of the Sandwich Structures Working Group since 2004, writing and editing the Quality Control chapter (Chapter 6) and the expansive Design and Analysis chapter (Chapter 4), as well as years of similarly active support to the M&P Working Group dating back (at least) as far as 2001.  She was a major contributor to the final edits of Volume 6 enabling an on-time delivery to the publisher under a very aggressive schedule during the summer of 2013. 

 Please extend your congratulations to Melanie!