2025
Theodore Courtois
Chair of the Board of Directors
SpaceVision 26
The Darrell Cain Award for Excellence
In honor of Darrell Cain, past board member of SEDS USA
Deadline: 2026 application Open in the Fall
Meet Darrell
As a member of the MIT SEDS chapter for his undergrad, the Stanford chapter for his masters, and our Council of Chapters Chair at the national level, Darrell reached a wide audience far beyond the SEDS scope. In his role, he helped grow SEDS as an organization, starting chapters and building the SEDS community. Darrell passed away in 2012. Darrell Cain was and remains an inspiration to his fellow SEDS members and all those who look to the stars.
“Darrell sharpened his leadership skills at SEDS before joining me and others to start Advanced Space as a co-founder. We lost him to cancer too soon. This award recognizes emerging leaders who contribute to SEDS like he did while keeping his memory alive within the industry and the organization. Anyone involved with Students for the Exploration and Development of Space (SEDS) should be thinking about who best represents these ideals and deserves this recognition.” – Bradley Cheetham, Co-Founder of Advanced Space and SEDS Alumni
About The Award
The Darrell Cain Award for Excellence is awarded each year to one student who is an embodiment of the SEDS vision of empowering young people to participate and make an impact in the exploration of space.
Criteria:
- Inspires other students to be passionate about space
- This person is expected to have a national SEDS involvement.
- This person is expected to have a space impact outside of SEDS
Awardee will receive:
- Ticket to SpaceVision 2027, including gala
- Cash award
Applications for the Darrell Cain award open at the end of July.
Past Recipients
2024
Griffin Hentzen
Council of Chapters Chair
The Council of Chapters Chair is the main communicator to all chapter leaders and represents them at the national board level. Griffin saw his role as something more- he saw it as an opportunity to build community between disparate chapters who may have never met and as a tool to grow the many benefits SEDS brings to its members. By completely re-vamping what monthly chapter meetings were about, Griffin grew attendance and participation and got to know every chapter leader on an individual level.
2023
Alice Wade
Vice Chair
Alice took it upon herself to strengthen SEDS for the chapters by being an advocate for diversity, spearheading the conference planning committee, and creating opportunities for students to bring their authentic selves to their chapters. Through her initiative and leadership, SpaceVision '23 was a great success which helped to grow SEDS as a community and give students a voice within the vast space industry.
As someone who poured my heart into SEDS for 4 years at my chapter and SEDS-USA, it meant the world to me to see that my contributions to the community were honored in this way. Hearing Darrell's story during the ceremony was so meaningful to me and everyone who was there that night, to show how impactful your legacy can be if you work to uplift those around you
2021
Sara Alvarado
Treasurer
In her role as Treasurer, Sara improved the fiscal competency and organization resiliency of SEDS USA, creating processes and systems that fostered a stronger SEDS. Sara went on to become the Chair, and then the Executive Director for the organization.
It has been my honor and privilege to help bring this organization, which has done so much for me, to the forefront of the industry as the voice of students invested in space. Darrell did so much for us and to know that his legacy lives on through this prestigious award speaks to the work he championed and the waves of impact he left behind.
2020
Ian Burrell
Council of Chapters Chair
Ian served many roles during his time at SEDS, including Virginia Tech SEDS president, SEDS-USA social media manager, SEDS-USA Council of Chapters Chair, and finally SEDS-USA Chair. It was in his role as Council of Chapters Chair that Ian obtained this prestigious award for all his work as a space advocate and for improving SEDS relations.
My goal as a member of the board was to provide opportunities to students across the nation and inspire the next generation of the aerospace industry. It was an honor to receive the Darrell Cain award in recognition of my service to SEDS-USA and our university chapters.
2019
Gautham Viswaroopa
Council of Chapters Chair
Gauthaum amplified the SEDS name and mission by growing the SEDS USA and the SEDS international chapter count substantially. Gautham just finished his PhD in Aerospace Engineering from UCLA while interning at The Aerospace Company.
This award embodies the thousands of students passionate about space that I was able to reach by developing new chapters not just nationwide, but worldwide. Bringing together our unique aspects of space exploration showed me that SEDS has the potential to inspire many lives to reach for the starts – more lives than we can even image
2018
Melanie Crowdson
Vice Chair
Melanie graduated from APUS in 2020 with her Master's degree in Astronomy with honors,and became her chapter's faculty advisor after that. During her time as Vice Chair she organized public events, led a project to collaborate on collecting data about meteors, conducted astrophotography sessions with the community, and organized the 2019 leadership retreat to Seattle.
2017
Dan Hirst
Conference Co-Chair
Serving as Treasurer, Dan modernized SEDS' financial management, including strategically planning how best to invest a generous endowment we had received. He also played an active role in organizing the 2017 SpaceVision conference in San Diego, and helped secure sponsorship and scholarships to allow as many students as possible the opportunity to attend the event
The Darrell Cain award was special to me because it came from people I respect and admire. To be honored like that whilst surrounded by so many intelligent, kind, driven people really underlined how lucky I was to be part of this community.
2016
John Conafay
Having lost two brothers myself, the Darrell Cain award has always held a very special place in my heart, as has SEDS and all the organization has given me. It is not hyperbole to say it continues to be one of the most meaningful awards of my life and I am truly thankful to be honored for service and care given to SEDS.
2015
Hannah Kerner
2014
Andrew Dianetti
2013
Dan Pastuf
Executive Director
Coming from the University of Buffalo SEDS chapter, Dan worked his way up to become the first Executive Director for SEDS-USA.
2012
Rick Hanton
Chair
Rick was the first Darrell Cain Awardee! Rick deeply cared about the mission and opportunity of SEDS. You can see a video of the first award here (1:05:15): SpaceVision 2012: SEDS-USA Annual Exploration Banquet which was introduced by Will Pomerantz and given by Darrell Cain (father).
I started at Iowa State as a Aerospace Engineering major and had a great time joining and eventually leading the Iowa State Space Society SEDS chapter in the late 2000s. Then I realized I could make an even bigger difference with all the awesome people from SEDS-USA that I had started meeting at SpaceVision conferences when Ryan McLinko resurrected SpaceVision in 2007 at MIT, working on chapter expansion and eventually Chairing SEDS-USA for a year (prior to SEDS having a separate board of directors & staff positions). I was really honored to be awarded the first Darrell Cain award the year after chairing SEDS-USA due to my continued commitment to the organization's future. I was lucky to know Darrell early in my SEDS career, and one of the things Darrell was known for was either listening in on board meetings or spending late nights looking through and commenting on our meeting notes. Part of why Dan Pastuf's board honored me with this award was that even after leaving the board and as Darrell's health had declined, I had kept up these traditions, trying to provide help, continuity, and guidance to the new leadership team. This is what the award truly means – going above and beyond the call of duty to ensure the future for SEDS students everywhere.