Graduation: Niles Ribeiro
2 July 2026: Congratulations to Dr. Niles Ribeiro for successfully defending his doctoral dissertation! Niles will be working at John Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.
Dissertation: Tabulated and Data-Driven Modeling of High-Speed Turbulent Combustion
Graduation: Ned Feist
22 April 2026: Congratulations to Dr. Edward Feist for successfully defending his doctoral dissertation! Ned will be working at Beta Technologies in Burlington, VT.
Dissertation: Advancements in Methods to Model Particles Interacting with Hypersonic Flows
Graduation: Spencer Yoder
6 May 2026: Congratulations to Spencer Yoder for successfully defending his masters thesis! Spencer will be working at the 412th Test Engineering Group at Edwards AFB as a USAF Developmental Engineer.
Graduation: Dr. Caleb Thomas
13 April 2026: Congratulations to Dr. Caleb Thomas for successfully defending his doctoral dissertation! Caleb will be working at ATA Engineering Inc.
Dissertation: Development of a Coupled Multiphysics Simulation Framework for the Analysis of Atmospheric Entry
Award Winners
Congratulations to Daniel Pekurovsky and Travis Drayna for receiving the Shahyar Pirzadeh Memorial Award for Outstanding Paper in Meshing, Visualization, and Computational Environments! They won this for their SciTech 2025 paper titled, "Scalable Mesh Generation With Refinement Patterns via High-Order Basis."
AIAA SciTech 2026
UMN students and faculty attended the 2026 AIAA Science and Technology forum, held January 12-16 2026 in Orlando, Florida. Members of the Computational Hypersonics Research Laboratory presented their work.
Erik Torres Researcher at University of Brussels
Congratulations to Erik Torres, who is taking a position as a researcher at University of Brussels!
Graduation: Joshua Mays
Congratulations to Joshua Mays for graduating with his MS. Josh will be working at North Wind.
Project: Quiet Direct Numerical Simulations on a Cone with an Inclined Slice and Compression Flap at Mach 6
National Research and Innovation Day
Carter Vu and UMN faculty presented at the National Research and Innovation Day, hosted by the National Security Research Institute (NSRI) at UMN February 24, 2025.
AIAA Scitech 2025
UMN students and faculty attended the 2025 AIAA Science and Technology forum, held January 6-10 2025 in Orlando, Florida. 7 members of the Computational Hypersonics Research Laboratory presented their work.
The full program can be found at: https://eppro02.ativ.me/src/EventPilot/php/express/web/planner.php?id=AIAASCITECH25
Graduation: Dr. Alexander Barrett
19 November, 2024: Congratulations to Dr. Barrett for successfully defending his doctoral dissertation! Alex will begin working at Spectral Sciences Inc.
Dissertation: Simulating Droplet Aerobreakup with a Low-Dissipation Diffuse Interface Method
Graduation: Dr. Luke Melander
30 August, 2024: Congratulations to Dr. Melander for successfully defending his doctoral dissertation! Luke will begin working at MIT Lincoln Laboratory.
Dissertation: Hypersonic Boundary Layer Receptivity to Atmospheric Turbulence
AIAA Aviation 2024
Joshua Mays presented work regarding separation bubble instability and turbulence to transition on the famous Oberkampf geometry at the AIAA aviation forum; held July 29th - August 2nd 2024 in Las Vegas.
UMN Hosts 2024 AFOSR/ONR/ARO High-Speed Aerodynamics Portfolio Review
The University of Minnesota hosted the annual AFOSR/ONR/ARO High-Speed Aerodynamics Portfolio Review May 5th through 9th. Topics included propulsion, non-equilibrium effects, gas-surface interaction, fluid-structure interaction, turbulent flows, shock-boundary layer interaction, transition to turbulence, and diagnostics, facilities, & instrumentation.
Computational Analyses of Hypersonic Transition Physics
Carter Vu (doctoral student & NSF Fellow) was invited to give a lecture at ONERA in Meudon, France on his work with Quiet Direct Numerical Simulation (QDNS). The lecture given on May 31, 2024 was in preparation for the NATO transition physics working group and therefore has wide-reaching implications for research around the world.
NDSEG Fellowship: Ned Feist
Congratulations to Ned Feist for being awarded a competitive NDSEG Fellowship! Since 1989, NDSEG fellowships have been awarded to approximately 4,700 students out of over 70,000 applicants, a rate of under 7% on average. (NDSEG Webpage)
Proposal: Characterization of Hypersonic Boundary Layer Flow over a Cratered Body
VKI Lecture Series
Pramod Subbareddy represented the UMN CHRL at the Von Karman Institute lecture series on Advanced Computational Fluid Dynamics Methods for Hypersonic Flows, held March 25-29 2024 in Brussels, Belgium. More information can be found at https://www.vki.ac.be/index.php/events-ls/events/eventdetail/577/-/advanced-computational-fluid-dynamics-methods-for-hypersonic-flows-vki-ls-and-sto-ls-avt-358
UCAH Spring Technical Exchange 2024
Daniel Pekurovsky & Ned Feist (advised by Prof. Graham Candler) and Sahadeo Ramjatan (advised by Prof. Tom Schwartzentruber) participated in the University Consortium for Applied Hypersonics Spring Technical Exchange March 11-14 in College Station, Texas. Projects worked on by the team include variable-inlet scramjet design and high-fidelity infrared signature modeling of hypersonic vehicles. Ned Feist gave a technical talk and presented a poster.
Additional information can be found at https://web.cvent.com/event/f3ff4a7f-9efd-4361-982d-e3561ace776d/summary
AIAA Scitech 2024
UMN Computational Hypersonics Research Lab students, faculty, and recent graduates authored and/or co-authored 16 papers at the AIAA Scitech forum January 8-12 in Orlando, Florida. Highlights include a session on turbulence and transition comprised fully of CHRL presenters, led by Prof. Graham Candler.
The full program can be found at https://eppro02.ativ.me/src/EventPilot/php/express/web/planner.php?id=AIAASCITECH24
Graduation: Dr. Joseph Habeck
13 December, 2023: Congratulations to Dr. Habeck for successfully defending his doctoral dissertation! Joey will begin working at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.
Dissertation: Characterizing Stratospheric Aerosol Particles and Particle Effects on Hypersonic Flight Vehicles
Graduation: Dr. Tyler Hendrickson
30 November, 2023: Congratulations to Dr. Hendrickson for successfully defending his doctoral dissertation! Tyler will begin working at the University of Minnesota as a Research Associate.
Dissertation: Compressible Corrections for Turbulence Models in High Speed Boundary Layer Flows
Lockheed Martin Visits UMN
18 July, 2023: Lockheed Martin visited the University of Minnesota to meet with students and faculty doing groundbreaking research and development in the areas of hypersonics, microelectronics and robotics.
Graduation: Dr. Chiara Amato
20 July, 2023: Congratulations to Dr. Amato for successfully defending her doctoral dissertation! Chiara will begin working at the German Aerospace Center.
Dissertation: Numerical Analysis of the Diffusive Transport Phenomena in Hypersonic Flows
Peter Yip wins commendation at Department Symposium
28 April, 2023: Congratulations to Peter Yip for winning Best Presentation at the AEM Graduate Symposium!
Poster: Multi-Scale Damage Evolution on Hypersonic Flight Vehicles
Graduation: Dr. Olivia Schroeder
10 April, 2023: Congratulations to Dr. Schroeder for successfully defending her doctoral dissertation! Olivia will begin working at the NASA Ames Research Center.
Dissertation: Multi-Physics Modeling of Ablative Processes
Graduation: Dr. Zachary Johnston
28 October, 2022: Congratulations to Dr. Johnston for successfully defending his doctoral dissertation! Zach will begin working at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.
Dissertation: Hypersonic Simulations and Analysis of Transition to Turbulence on BoLT-2
Graham Candler Inducted into National Academy of Engineering
On October 20, 2022 Professor Graham Candler was inducted into the National Academy of Engineering, reflecting a lifetime of high achievement and dedication to the field of hypersonics. More information can be found at https://www.nae.edu/224672/Professor-Graham-V-Candler
Zachary Johnston wins commendation from University Consortium for Applied Hypersonics
6 April, 2022: Zach was a finalist in the student poster competition at the University Consortium for Applied Hypersoncics spring forum at Texas A&M.
Graham Candler - Stillwell Lecture
21 October, 2019: Graham V. Candler gave the second of four H.S. Stillwell Memorial Lectures on Monday, Oct. 21 at the University of Illinois. Candler is the McKnight Presidential Professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering & Mechanics at the University of Minnesota His talk was entitled, " Boundary Layer Stability Analysis of the BOLT Hypersonic Flight Experiment." The H.S. Stillwell Memorial Lecture was established in honor of Professor H.S. (Shel) Stillwell. In 1944, when he was 27 years old, he founded the Department of Aeronautical Engineering at the University of Illinois. He was the department head for 32 years. Stillwell was influential in the design of the first ramjet-powered missile and highly respected for his contributions to aerospace engineering education. The Dept. of Aerospace Engineering typically hosts one Stillwell speaker each year. During the 2019-20 academic year, the department will host four in celebration of the department's 75th anniversary.
Hypersonic Center of Excellence established at the University of Minnesota
September 2011: The Center of Excellence in Hypersonics Research was established to support future hypersonic vehicle development programs. The Center engaged leading experts in experimental and computational analysis of hypersonic flows to provide research, education, and technology development in hypersonics. The Center combined the worlds premiere hypervelocity testing facility at the CUBRC with state-of-the-art computational simulation methods at the University of Minnesota to rapidly advance the field of hypersonics. The Center supported fundamental research in hypersonics, including the development of high-quality experimental databases for code testing and validation of prediction tools. Many of these codes have been transferred to government and industry to enable optimized hypersonic vehicle designs. The Center also supported a rigorous graduate program that transferred technical capabilities from the previous generation of hypersonics experts to new students in the field. This helped preserve the nations dwindling talent pool and provided a source of scientists and engineers for future research and development programs.