---
id: people/edward-glaessgen
about:
  label: Edward Glaessgen
  description: >-
    NASA Langley materials and structures researcher who, with D. S. Stargel,
    set out the digital twin paradigm for aircraft and spacecraft in 2012.
  tags:
    - digital twin
    - structures
    - NASA
    - history
person:
  affiliation: NASA Langley Research Center
  role: computational materials researcher
provenance:
  origin: agent
  sources:
    - title: >-
        The Digital Twin Paradigm for Future NASA and U.S. Air Force Vehicles
        (Glaessgen and Stargel, NASA Technical Reports Server)
      url: 'https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20120008178'
    - title: >-
        Dr. Edward Glaessgen spoke at the CISMMS Special Seminar (Johns Hopkins
        University, 2015)
      url: >-
        https://cismms.jhu.edu/dr-xin-sun-spoke-at-the-ce-cismms-graduate-seminar/
    - title: >-
        Microstructure-focused Durability and Damage Tolerance Research at NASA
        Langley (NASA Technical Reports Server)
      url: 'https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20200006265'
    - title: >-
        DRAFT Modeling, Simulation, Information Technology & Processing Roadmap,
        Technology Area 11 (NASA, November 2010; Internet Archive copy of
        nasa.gov)
      url: >-
        https://web.archive.org/web/20101208235448/http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/501321main_TA11-MSITP-DRAFT-Nov2010-A1.pdf
  created: '2026-11-02'
  reviewed: '2026-11-02'
  reviewed_by: 'Claude, from the sources listed'
  status: draft
---
Edward H. Glaessgen works at NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.[^1] In 2015 a Johns Hopkins seminar notice gave his title as Senior Technologist for Computational Materials at Langley.[^2] He was a member of the team, chaired by [Mike Shafto](/people/mike-shafto/), that wrote NASA's November 2010 draft roadmap for modelling, simulation, information technology and processing.[^4]

With D. S. Stargel of the Air Force Office of Scientific Research he wrote The Digital Twin Paradigm for Future NASA and U.S. Air Force Vehicles.[^1] Its abstract argues that current ways of certifying and maintaining vehicles, based on statistical material properties and physical testing, will not meet the demands of future ones.[^1] In their place it proposes a digital twin that joins ultra-high-fidelity simulation with the vehicle's own health monitoring and history "to mirror the life of its flying twin".[^1] A later Langley presentation that lists him as an author names the Airframe Digital Twin, modelling each aircraft or spacecraft as built and as it has been loaded, as one of two challenge problems guiding Langley's research on durability and damage tolerance.[^3]

The wiki's [history of the digital twin](/articles/history-of-the-digital-twin/) describes the 2012 paper and its "as-built" definition.