Laufer Lecture

The keynote lecture for Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering is named after the late Janos Laufer, a renowned fluids authority who was the founding chair of the Department of Aerospace Engineering (before it merged with Mechanical Engineering).

2023
Howard Stone
Donald R. Dixon ’69 and Elizabeth W. Dixon Professor
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Princeton University
“Thin-Film Flows: From Similarity Solutions to New Insights in Molecular Biology”

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2019
Balakumar Balachandran
Department Chair and Minta Martin Professor of Mechanical Engineering
University of Maryland
“Nonlinear Dynamics with Noise”
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2018
Charles Meneveau
Louis M. Sardella Professor of Mechanical Engineering, and Associate Director, Institute for Data Intensive Engineering and Science, Johns Hopkins University
“New analytical models for turbulence spectra and turbine wakes in wind farms”
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2017
Clarence W. Rowley
Professor
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Princeton University
“Structure, Stability, and Simplicity in Complex Fluid Flows”
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2016
Morteza Gharib
Hans W. Liepmann Professor of Aeronautics, Professor of Bioinspired Engineering, Director of Graduate Aerospace Laboratories, Vice Provost, Division of Engineering and Applied Science, California Institute of Technology
“On the Generation of Toroidal Micro-Plasmas in the Flow Field of Impinging Water-Jets”
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2015
Harry L. Swinney
Sid Richardson Foundation Regents Chair
Department of Physics, College of Natural Sciences, University of Texas at Austin
“Internal Gravity Wave Energy in the Oceans”
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2014
John A. Rogers
Swanlund Chair Professor
Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign
“A Stretchy, Curvy Future for Electronics: From Brain Interfaces to Fly’s Eye Cameras”
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2012
Patrick Huerre
Hydrodynamics Laboratory – LadHyx
CNRS – Ecole Polytechnique
“Amplifiers and Oscillators: A Hydronamic Stability Perspective”
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2011
John Bush
Professor of Applied Mathematics
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
“Hydrodynamic Quantum Analogues: Droplets Walking on the Impossible Pilot Wave”
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2010
L. Mahadevan
Lola England de Valpine Professor of Applied Mathematics, Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology
Harvard University
“On Growth and Form: Mathematics, Mechanics and Morphogenesis”
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2010
Dr. Stephen H. Davis
McCormick School Professor
Walter P. Murphy Professor of Engineering Sciences and Applied Mathematics
“Control and Suppression of Interfacial Instabilities by Shear”
 

2009
Elaine Oran, PhD.
Senior Scientist for Reactive Flow Physics
Naval Research Laboratory
“The Laminar Flame to Turbulent Flame to Detonation Transition: Studies of Non-Kolmogorov Turbulence and Stochasticity”
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2007
Anatol Roshko (inaugural lecture)
“Reflections of the Turbulence Problem”
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