February 16, 2015
On February 4, 2015, faculty, staff and friends of the Department of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics gathered together to celebrate Professor David Hull’s recent retirement on the UT campus. Read more about Dr. Hull’s greatest accomplishments during his career as a professor below. We wish him all the best as he moves forward with this new chapter of his life.
Professor David Hull, P.E., has retired after nearly 50 years of service in the Department of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics at The University of Texas at Austin. He joined the faculty in September 1966 after receiving his Ph.D. from Rice University. He has five years of industrial experience at Boeing Scientific Research Laboratories, spent three summers working at Sandia National Laboratories and has served as a consultant for several aerospace companies.
Hull has been active in the governance of the university by serving on department, college, and university committees and holding a number of administrative positions. At the department level, Hull served as the Chairman of the ASE Graduate Studies Committee and was the ASE Graduate Advisor for more than twenty years. In addition, he was regularly involved in the design of the undergraduate curriculum and strategic planning. He was also a member of the Graduate Assembly for many years and served as the Chairman of the Administrative Committee for two years, during which time several pieces of major legislation were passed that affected the entire university, one of which prevented UT from adopting the honorary A+ grade.
Regarding research, Hull was a pioneer in the conversion of optimal control problems into parameter optimization problems. He applied his techniques to the calculation of optimal atmospheric trajectories including those of launch vehicles, reentry vehicles, and missiles. One of his greatest achievements is in the clarification of the use of differentials in optimization and perturbation theory. The use of differentials has made it possible to unify all the theories of optimization.
During his time teaching graduate courses in analytical and numerical optimization and flight mechanics, Hull served as faculty supervisor or co-supervisor to 53 M.S. and 17 Ph.D. degrees. One of his former students, Matt Harris, Ph.D. ASE ’14, has fond memories of time spent working under Hull’s supervision.
“Dr. Hull and I worked closely on a number of theoretical and applied problems in optimization. He was extremely generous with his time, and I spent many hours standing at his office blackboard soaking up his knowledge,” said Harris. “Dr. Hull was also an excellent teacher, communicating his thoughts with precision and clarity. The times I spent with him were some of the most rewarding intellectual experiences I have had.”
Harris, who is now working as a research engineer at ExxonMobil in Houston, said that Hull still continues to support him both a mentor and friend.
“As I move on into professional life, I am glad to have Dr. Hull as a mentor and friend. He continues to share encouragement and wisdom with me. I, along with many others, am thankful that my time at UT overlapped with Dr. Hull’s.”
Throughout his career, Hull has published 61 papers, two books and four book chapters. He also presented 76 papers at technical conferences and has been the principal investigator or co-principal investigator for grants and contracts exceeding $2.5M.
Hull has received numerous awards over the years for teaching and research, which have included Cockrell School of Engineering’s Departmental Teaching Award and Faculty Excellence Award and the AAS/AIAA Space Flight Mechanics Conference Best Paper Award. He was named Fellow of the American Astronautical Society in 2005.
After serving as an associate editor of the Journal of Optimization Theory and Applications for over thirty years, Hull was named Editor-in-Chief of the journal in January 2010 and will continue to serve in this role for the next two years.
