February 13, 2012
Bubble dynamics expert elected to National Academy of Engineering
Andrea Prosperetti, a Johns Hopkins professor who is an internationally respected expert in the mechanics of fluids, has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering, the organization announced Feb. 9.
Election to the academy is considered among the highest professional distinctions accorded to an engineer. Membership honors those who have made outstanding contributions to engineering research, practice or education, and to the pioneering of new and developing fields of technology.
Prosperetti, who is the Charles A. Miller Jr. Distinguished Professor of Mechanical Engineering in the Whiting School of Engineering, was recognized for “contributions to the fundamentals and applications of multiphase flows.”
Multiphase flows include the bottom transport of sediment in rivers, the boiling of a liquid in a power generation plant, the complex gas-liquid mixture in an oil pipeline and other situations in which solids, liquids and gases flow together. His work focuses mainly on bubble dynamics, fluid-particle flows, computational fluid dynamics and acoustics.
Regarding his election to the academy, Prosperetti said the credit should be shared. “I think this represents recognition for the conditions that enabled me to do good work at Johns Hopkins,” he said.
Prosperetti received a doctorate in engineering science from Caltech in 1974 and taught at the University of Milan, Italy, before joining Johns Hopkins in 1985. Currently the editor in chief of the International Journal of Multiphase Flow, he is author or co-author of about 180 papers in refereed journals. He also is author of the book Advanced Mathematics for Applications and co-author of two other books.
In addition to his work at Johns Hopkins, Prosperetti is the Berkhoff Professor of Applied Physics in the Department of Applied Sciences of the University of Twente in the Netherlands.
This year the academy elected 66 new members and 10 foreign associates, bringing the total U.S. membership to 2,254 and the number of foreign associates to 206.
Others on the Johns Hopkins faculty who are members of the academy are Edmund Y.S. Chao, a retired School of Medicine professor of orthopedic surgery; Kenneth Keller, director of SAIS’ Bologna Center; Robert A. Dalrymple, the Willard and Lillian Hackerman Professor of Civil Engineering; Murray B. Sachs, University Distinguished Service Professor of Biomedical Engineering; Eugene D. Shchukin, a Whiting School research professor emeritus; and James E. West, a research professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering.