Endowed fellowships provide full-to-partial tuition and stipends to ease the financial pressures on Michigan Engineering graduate students, and help them avoid prolonged years of debt. With the support of endowed fellowships, these students can focus on the demands of their coursework and research.

FXB Fellowship

The Department of Aerospace Engineering (Aero) has benefited from the generosity of the François-Xavier Bagnoud (FXB) Foundation in a number of ways, including the establishment of the François-Xavier Bagnoud Fellowship of Aerospace Engineering, which provides tuition and various fees and stipends for graduate students, and one trip home each year for up to five years. Wei Shyy, Aero chair and Clarence L. “Kelly” Johnson Collegiate Professor of Engineering, said that the FXB Fellowship “offers substantial opportunity for the department to recruit the brightest students and enable them to work with faculty mentors to pursue research topics without immediate external support. Consequently, we have opportunities to promote more ‘risk taking’ in our research and energize students and faculty to do forward-looking investigation to develop a significantly new knowledge base or revolutionize certain topical areas.”

In addition to the FXB Fellowship, the FXB Foundation has magnified its impact on Aero by supporting the François-Xavier Bagnoud Professorship of Aerospace Engineering and contributing to the establishment of the FXB Building, which was completed in 1993; the creation of the Wave Field, a landscape sculpture designed by internationally renowned artist Maya Lin; the Aero Library and Learning Center; and the FXB Center for Rotary and Fixed Wing Air Vehicle Design.

Association François-Xavier Bagnoud

Pictured at right: Wei Shyy, Clarence L “Kelly” Johnson Collegiate Professor of Aerospace Engineering and chair; Albina du Boisrouvray, mother of François-Xavier Bagnoud; Dave Munson, Robert J. Vlasic Dean of Engineering.

The Association carries the name of François-Xavier Bagnoud (BSE Aero ’82), a helicopter pilot specializing in rescue operations, who dedicated his life to providing assistance to others.

By the end of his secondary studies, he was already a licensed and experienced pilot. An aeronautics enthusiast, he entered the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Michigan in 1979. After excelling in his studies, he obtained his engineering degree and published a reference manual: “Theory of the Helicopter for Private Pilots.”

His passion for flying was such that he became the youngest professional Instrument Flight Related (IFR) airplane and helicopter pilot in Europe at age 23. This same ardor, combined with an extreme generosity, led him to join his father’s company, Air Glaciers, in Sion, Switzerland. Within three years, he carried out some 300 rescue flights in the Alps and in the deserts of Africa.

In 1986 at the age of 24, he lost his life during a helicopter-borne mission in Mali. In 1989, his mother Albina du Boisrouvray, his family and their friends founded the Association François-Xavier Bagnoud in order to pursue, in the field of development, the rescue missions that he led and to perpetuate the values of generosity and compassion that guided his life, focusing on AIDS orphans and vulnerable children.