Terry Alfriend

Kyle Terry Alfriend III (born 1940) is an American engineer and professor of aerospace engineering at Texas A&M University (TAMU). He has been a member of the National Academy of Engineering since 1999 and a Regents Professor in the Texas A&M University System since 2024.

Alfriend was born in Macon, Georgia in 1940, though he was raised in Danville, Virginia. He attended Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia, from which he received a B.S. degree in 1962. He then went to Stanford University, where he attained an M.S. in 1964 before returning to Virginia Tech for his Ph.D., which was awarded in 1967. Both of his degrees from Virginia Tech are in engineering mechanics.

Following his bachelor's degree, Alfriend was employed by Lockheed in California. While there, he received his master's degree from Stanford. He later quit Lockheed and returned to school for a doctorate. In 1967, Alfriend began working at Cornell University as an assistant professor of mechanics. In 1996, he began work at Texas A&M University as department head of aerospace engineering in the TAMU College of Engineering and Texas Engineering Experiment Station. he served the named chair the Jack E. and Frances Brown Chair II. His research spans space domain awareness and the control of spacecraft and satellites. Alfriend and his wife established an endowed scholarship within the TAMU aerospace engineering department in 2023.

Since 2017, Alfriend has been a University Distinguished Professor at TAMU, and since 2024, he has been a Regents Professor, the highest faculty honor of the Texas A&M System.

During his career, Alfriend has received several notable awards. In 1998, he was awarded the Mechanics and Control of Flight Award by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA). In 1999, he was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering, and in 2015 he was named an honorary fellow of the AIAA. In 2022, the institute awarded Alfriend the Goddard Astronautics Award, for his contributions to "orbital mechanics and space situational awareness". Alfriend, alongside department partner John Junkins, had asteroids named after them in 2025.

From 1992 to 1996, he served as the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Guidance, Control, and Dynamics, which is published by the AIAA. Before that, he was editor-in-chief of The Journal of the Astronautical Sciences, published by Springer Nature for the American Astronautical Society (AAS);