GRANITE CITY HIGH SCHOOL
CLASS OF 1982

Lt. Col. (retired) Scott A. Morton directs long-range planning and daily operations for the Institute for High Performance Computing Applications to Air Armament (IHAAA), a software development institute at the Air Force SEEK EAGLE Office at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida. Scott’s responsibilities include financial planning, project planning and development, technology development, technology transition, and reporting. The Institute applies high performance computing simulation technology using massively parallel computers (over 10,000 central processing units per machine) to aircraft-stores certification and testing. Scott is the Principle Investigator/Project Manager for the Air Armament Stability and Control project integrating a team across four organizations in the Air Force and Navy developing software and processes for computational stability and control analysis of fighters, cargo aircraft, and weapons. He is also the Principle Investigator/Project Manager for the High Fidelity Fluid-Structure Interaction project integrating team members developing software and processes for computational analysis of fluid-structure interaction of aircraft with stores and weapons. He is the principle advisor to the Commander of SEEK EAGLE on Computational Aeromechanics, Computational Fluid Dynamics, Computational Structural Dynamics, aero-structural interactions, and stability and control.

Scott graduated with Summa Cum Laude honors in December 1985 from Parks College of St. Louis University, Cahokia, Illinois, with a BS in Aerospace Engineering. He was a Distinguished Graduate of the Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT), Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, in 1989 with a MS degree. During his MS degree research, Scott won the “Best Thesis in Fluid Dynamics” award from the Aeronautics Department for his work on computational simulations of vortex breakdown. In 1996, he received his Ph.D. from AFIT after finishing his dissertation entitled “Nonlinear Analysis of Airfoil Flutter at Transonic Speeds.” This work later proved to be foundational for United States and United Kingdom national laboratory cooperative research in aircraft aero-elasticity.

Scott entered service in the Air Force on February 1, 1986, with a first assignment at the Foreign Technology Division, Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio, where he was a Ballistic Missile Performance Engineer for Soviet and Chinese Space Launch Vehicles and Ballistic Missiles. Scott’s second assignment was to Edwards AFB where he was a flight controls engineer on the B-2 Bomber. He was responsible for handling qualities testing of the B-2 in the second, third and fourth years of the flight test program. These were crucial years of envelope expansion of the B-2 bomber, one of the most unique aircraft ever built. This is also where he was fortunate enough to do one of the most rewarding additional duties of his career by becoming an F-16B/D crew member flying safety chase for the B-2 test missions (110 hours). His third assignment was to the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), Computational Sciences Branch at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Scott started a software development group developing a program to analyze aero-elastic effects of fighter aircraft, leading four Ph.D. researchers and winning best paper awards in the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Dayton mini-Symposium. His work contributed to the groups Star Team rating from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research. After serving two years in the Computational Sciences Branch, Scott was recruited to work on the AFRL Headquarters Plans and Programs (AFRL/XPA) staff where he was an Aeronautics Portfolio Planner. This job allowed him to have input into the technologies funded by AFRL in the area of aeronautics. Scott also formed a close working relationship with the Air Mobility Command (AMC), headquartered at Scott AFB, IL, to determine what AFRL technologies should be transitioned to AMC and what technologies were needed for the future of AMC. His final assignment in the Air Force was at the Air force Academy (USAFA) teaching aerodynamics. It was in this assignment that his culmination of experiences led to world class research status in Computational Aerodynamics.

In his first year at the Air Force Academy, Scott won the “New Instructor of the Year Award” for his teaching while initiating one of the most successful research centers at the Academy. After almost eight years at USAFA, Scott has been a Division Chief, CFD Working Group Lead, Modeling and Simulation Research Center Director, teacher of Thermodynamics, Aerodynamics, Aero-elasticity, Computational Aerodynamics, and supervised a great many cadet special topics courses. He attained the academic rank of Professor in his first year of eligibility and is one of only a handful of military members to attain this rank. He also birthed and caused exponential growth in one of the Academy’s premier research centers and was the Principle Investigator of one of the top 10 DoD Computational Challenge Projects with a computational resource budget worth over $6M per year. He has been a principle investigator or co-researcher on projects involving the F-16C, F-16XL, F-15E, F/A-18C, CV-22, C-130H, C-17, and Blended Wing Body NASA Future Transport. In 2002, Scott won the Seiler Research Award for his research in fighter aerodynamics. Also in 2002, the CFD group of Scott, Prof. Russ Cummings, Dr. Jim Forsythe, and Dr. Doug Blake won the AF Science and Engineering Award for Exploratory or Advanced Technology Development (AF top research award) and his group has gained world-wide notoriety in CFD since. Scott is the author of over 14 articles in peer reviewed international journals, 45 conference papers, and an AIAA textbook on Computational Aerodynamics. He has also been an invited speaker to the Royal Aeronautical Society in the United Kingdom, the NATO Research and Technology Organization in Athens, Greece, and the 4th Asian CFD conference in Pusan, Korea.

In 1985, Scott married Carrie McCoy, a 1984 graduate of Granite City High School. They have three children, Ashley, Caitlin, and Caleb. Carrie is a Registered Nurse, Ashley is an art student and hair stylist, and Caitlin and Caleb are students. On June 1, 2006, Scott retired from the Active Duty Air Force after over 20 years in the active duty. Scott’s selfless service to the Air Force and the nation has been exemplary, and he leaves a significant legacy.