Brown Engineering Ph.D. student Anoop Kiran won first place for his research presentation “Mutual Aerodynamic Interactions between Aerial Robots in Close Proximity,” co-authored with Professor Kenny Breuer and Associate Professor Nora Ayanian, at the 2025 AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science) Annual Meeting in Boston. This student award includes recognition in a recent issue of Science and a cash prize.
The competition featured students from several educational institutions, nationally and internationally, with presentations evaluated by judges from backgrounds that included the federal government, policymakers, academia, and industry professionals. The 2025 AAAS conference focused on bridging scientific expertise across disciplines.
“I used a simple analogy of instability caused by airplane turbulence — how aircraft shake when passing through air currents left by another plane,” Kiran said. “Similar to how passengers feel unexpected bumps, drones experience destabilizing forces when flying through another drone’s disturbed airflow, creating safety concerns for multi-robot teams. And just as smaller planes are more affected by turbulence than larger ones, small-scale drones are particularly vulnerable to these aerodynamic disruptions.
“It was rewarding to translate our work on drone aerodynamics research for researchers from different fields,” he said. “I am grateful to my research mentors, Kenny and Nora, for their guidance throughout my time at Brown. They have been there when I needed them most, offering support during challenging research phases, while encouraging me to explore new directions. I have learned from their diverse areas of expertise and approaches towards solving exciting research problems.”
Kiran also credits Brown’s STEM Instructional Librarians Jason Cerrato and Kelsey Sawyer for their insights on effectively presenting to non-technical audiences.
The work builds on a presentation from last year at the AIAA (American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics) Aviation conference in Las Vegas, where Kiran’s first-authored paper with undergraduate Narek Harutyunyan and research mentors was a finalist for best paper in applied aerodynamics. “The feedback from colleagues at the aviation conference was instrumental in helping refine our methodology and research questions,” Kiran said.
Brown’s Open Graduate Program has allowed Kiran to design and develop his interdisciplinary doctoral research path beyond traditional departmental constraints. With this institutional support, he is combining approaches from fluid dynamics and aerial robotics by pursuing a master’s in computer science alongside his engineering Ph.D. His research is supported by an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, an Open Graduate Fellowship (Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and Brown University Graduate School), and a Brown University Division of Research Seed Award co-led by principal investigators Breuer and Ayanian.