08-21-13
John O. Dabiri, Professor of Aeronautics and Bioengineering, has been selected by the editors of MIT Technology Review as one of this year's Innovators Under 35. He joins a group of exceptionally talented young innovators whose work is believed to have the greatest potential to transform the world. Professor Dabiri was chosen for his bioinspired engineering work on wind farms. [MIT Technology Review Article]
Tags: GALCIT MedE John Dabiri
07-31-13
Beverley McKeon, Professor of Aeronautics and Associate Director of GALCIT, and her colleagues have developed a new and improved way of looking at the composition of turbulence near walls, the type of flow that dominates our everyday life. "This kind of turbulence is responsible for a large amount of the fuel that is burned to move humans, freight, and fluids such as water, oil, and natural gas, around the world," Professor Mckeon describes. They have devised a new method of looking at wall turbulence by reformulating the equations that govern the motion of fluids—called the Navier-Stokes equations—into an infinite set of smaller, simpler subequations, or "blocks," with the characteristic that they can be simply added together to introduce more complexity and eventually get back to the full equations. [Caltech Release]
07-30-13
The Indian Department of Space / Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has established a fellowship at Caltech in the name of Caltech alumnus Satish Dhawan (Eng '49, PhD '51) who is a pioneer of India's space program. "The ISRO is honoring Dhawan and Caltech with this fellowship, and it is also recognizing the historical connections between engineers and scientists in the United States and India," says Chair Ares Rosakis. "India has a very strong domestically grown space program," explains GALCIT Director G. Ravichandran. "The ISRO is hoping to maintain its momentum by training students in much the same way that Dhawan was trained when he went through GALCIT decades ago." [Learn More] [Caltech Release]
Tags: GALCIT Guruswami Ravichandran Ares Rosakis Satish Dhawan
07-24-13
Guruswami Ravichandran, John E. Goode, Jr., Professor of Aerospace and Professor of Mechanical Engineering as well as Director of the Graduate Aerospace Laboratories, will be receiving the A. C. Eringen Medal at the 50th Annual Technical Meeting of the Society of Engineering Science. At the meeting there will also be a symposium to honor Professor Ravichandran; covering the topics of shock and high-rate phenomena, active/shape-memory alloys, biological materials, composite materials, and digital image correlation. The A. C. Eringen Medal is awarded in recognition of sustained outstanding achievements in Engineering Science.
Tags: honors GALCIT MCE Guruswami Ravichandran A. C. Eringen Medal
06-20-13
Ian Jacobi, a graduate student working with Professor Beverley McKeon, is the recipient of the 2013 Richard B. Chapman Memorial Award. Dr. Jacobi has studied the effect of roughness-based forcing on the turbulent boundary layer and investigated means by which macroscopic perturbation of the boundary layer can be used to control the small-scale flow physics important for the reduction of viscous drag. He is continuing his studies in fluid mechanics as a post-doctoral scholar at Princeton University, where he is exploring drag reduction from the perspective of low-Reynolds number micro-fluidic devices. The Richard B. Chapman Memorial Award is given to an EAS graduate student in hydrodynamics who has distinguished himself or herself in research.
Tags: honors GALCIT Beverley McKeon Richard B. Chapman Memorial Award Ian Jacobi
06-14-13
The student winners of the 2013 Demetriades - Tsafka - Kokkalis Prizes were announced at a special luncheon with the Demetriades - Tsafka – Kokkalis family.
Tags: APhMS EE honors GALCIT Changhuei Yang John Dabiri CMS Demetriades - Tsafka - Kokkalis Prizes Frances Arnold Kanianthra Mani Chandy Guoan Zheng Axel Scherer Janna Nawroth Pedro Coelho Michael Olson James McKone Harry Gray Aditya Rajagopal
06-10-13
John O. Dabiri, Professor of Aeronautics and Bioengineering, has big plans for a high school in San Pedro, military bases in California, and a small village on Bristol Bay, Alaska. "We have been able to demonstrate that using wind turbines that are 30 feet tall, as opposed to 300 feet tall, could generate sufficient power for wind-farm applications," Dabiri says. "One of the areas where these smaller turbines can have an immediate impact is in the military." The Office of Naval Research is funding a three-year project by Dabiri's group to test the smaller vertical-axis wind turbines (VAWTs) and to further develop software tools to determine their optimal placement. "We believe that these smaller turbines provide the opportunity to generate renewable power while being complementary to the ongoing activities at the base," Dabiri explains. [Learn More]
05-06-13
Donald E. Coles, Professor of Aeronautics, Emeritus, passed away on May 2, 2013 at the age of 89. Professor Coles made pioneering contributions towards our understanding of boundary layers, turbulent shear flows, bluff-body aerodynamics, and novel experimental methods in fluid dynamics. He was a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a Fellow of both the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and the American Physical Society. In 2011 he was honored with the Donald Coles Lecture in Aerospace. He remained active till his passing, working on a book on Turbulent Shear Flow that is very near completion. [Caltech Obituary]
04-23-13
Aerospace alumnus (MS ‘78) and Caltech Board of Trustee member David W. Thompson and his team at Orbital Sciences Corporation successfully launched the first Antares Rocket on Sunday April 21, 2013. With this rocket Orbital is introducing USA's newest medium-class space launch vehicle. When asked about the experience Thompson commented, "next to GALCIT exams, launching big rockets for the first time is about as hard as things get!" [ENGenious Profile] [Caltech Feature] [Orbital Release]
04-10-13
At a recent ceremony held in the Theodore von Kármán Conference room of the Guggenheim Building, École Polytechnique president Yves Demay, Caltech president Jean-Lou Chameau, EAS Chair Ares Rosakis and Professor Patrick Le Tallec of École Polytechnique signed an agreement for a Master's Education Exchange Program in Aeronautics/Space Engineering and Mechanics. The objective of the master’s degree program is to foster the development of a long-term cooperation on basic research topics of interest to the Aerospace and Aeronautical Sciences community between Caltech and École Polytechnique. [Press Release]
Tags: GALCIT Guruswami Ravichandran Ares Rosakis École Polytechnique
