July 28, 2020
It is with sadness that we announce that retired professor Ronald O. Stearman passed away on July 21, 2020 after a brief illness. He was 88.
Stearman was a faculty member in the Department of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics for over 40 years and continued to serve as an aviation safety consultant after his retirement. During his time in the department, Stearman’s research focused on structural dynamics and aeroelasticity with emphasis on the development of analytical/experimental nonlinear system identification techniques. He was honored with a Computerworld Smithsonian Award (1999) in the Transportation Division for his team's innovative work on utilizing the structural acoustics sounds on a cockpit voice recorder to identify the cause of an airliner accident. He was a private pilot and longtime member of the AIAA and the Experimental Aircraft Association.
Stearman is survived by two sisters, two children, six grandchildren, and two great granddaughters. The family would like to direct memorial donations in his honor to the Code2College Vision 2024 initiative supporting the placement of 200 black and Latinx women into STEM roles by 2024 at https://code2college.org/Vision-2024.
Read the full obituary.
