Two aerospace Ph.D. students awarded donor-funded fellowships
Kacy Carter and Adam Zheng will use the opportunity to work on projects involving clean energy and materials critical to the future of human space travel.
(Left to right) Adam Zheng and Kacy Carter.
Aerospace Ph.D. students Kacy Carter and Adam Zheng have been awarded prestigious donor funded fellowships for the 2026-27 academic year.
Carter, this year’s Stanger Endowed Graduate Fellowship recipient, graduated with a bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering from Texas A&M University in May 2025 before pursuing her doctorate. As a Ph.D. student, she hopes to attend as many conferences as possible, publish her research and build a strong foundation for her goal of pursuing a career in academia.
“I’ll be able to focus on my research because of this fellowship,” Carter said. “I feel the support from my department, and it also looks really good for future positions. It will give me a leg up.”
Carter is excited to continue the work on the possibilities of plasma research that she started in her undergraduate career. She said plasma has many applications she would love to pursue, including advancing energy research and studying vehicles that travel at hypersonic speeds.
The fellowship was created by Dianna Stanger, who has dedicated her life to aviation. She has earned several aircraft licenses, won the Reno Air Races twice, owns Darkstar Air Racing and has used her experience to assist charities by transporting critical care patients and rescue dogs by air. Inspired by her lifelong love of aerospace engineering and confidence in Texas A&M’s aerospace engineering program, she established the fellowship to empower doctoral students to pursue their aspirations, advance innovative research and contribute to the future of the profession.
The Sandra and William R. Wheeler ’70 Endowed Graduate Fellowship in Aerospace Engineering was awarded to Zheng. He earned his bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering in 2026 before pursuing his doctorate. Zheng’s passion for space and humanity’s dedication to space exploration kept him in aerospace engineering, and his Aggie pride kept him on campus.
He hopes the fellowship will support the research he started in the last year of his undergraduate degree, which focuses on tools that imitate deforming structures in space environments to help scientists understand how to repair them. At the end of his Ph.D., he said he is optimistic he can build a solid foundation of research as he continues his academic career.
“This fellowship is a starting point that I have to build off of and then I’ll see where my research takes me,” Zheng said. “I hope to be a part of a novel contribution to the field that I’m passionate about.”
This fellowship was named for William Wheeler, a former student who was the vice president and a founding member of CD-adapco. After retiring, Wheeler and his wife, Sandy, formed a family charitable foundation focused on creating positive societal impact through education and innovation. Their dedication to fostering future talent inspired the fellowship, which strives to support graduate students pursuing aerospace engineering and empower them to advance the discoveries and technologies that will shape the future of the industry.
