School of Engineering


Showing 1-10 of 36 Results

  • Juan Alonso

    Juan Alonso

    Vance D. and Arlene C. Coffman Professor and the James and Anna Marie Spilker Chair of the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics

    BioProf. Alonso is the founder and director of the Aerospace Design Laboratory (ADL) where he specializes in the development of high-fidelity computational design methodologies to enable the creation of realizable and efficient aerospace systems. Prof. Alonso’s research involves a large number of different manned and unmanned applications including transonic, supersonic, and hypersonic aircraft, helicopters, turbomachinery, and launch and re-entry vehicles. He is the author of over 200 technical publications on the topics of computational aircraft and spacecraft design, multi-disciplinary optimization, fundamental numerical methods, and high-performance parallel computing. Prof. Alonso is keenly interested in the development of an advanced curriculum for the training of future engineers and scientists and has participated actively in course-development activities in both the Aeronautics & Astronautics Department (particularly in the development of coursework for aircraft design, sustainable aviation, and UAS design and operation) and for the Institute for Computational and Mathematical Engineering (ICME) at Stanford University. He was a member of the team that currently holds the world speed record for human powered vehicles over water. A student team led by Prof. Alonso also holds the altitude record for an unmanned electric vehicle under 5 lbs of mass.

  • Manan Arya

    Manan Arya

    Assistant Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics

    Current Research and Scholarly InterestsManan Arya leads the Morphing Space Structures Laboratory. His research is on structures that can adapt their shape to respond to changing requirements. Examples include deployable structures for spacecraft that can stow in constrained volumes for launch and then unfold to larger sizes in space, terrestrial structures with variable geometry, and morphing robots. Key research thrusts include lightweight fiber-reinforced composite materials to enable innovative designs for flexible structures, and the algorithmic generation of the geometry of morphing structures – the arrangement of stiff and compliant elements – to enable novel folding mechanisms.

    He has published more than 20 journal and conference papers and has been awarded 5 US patents. Prior to joining Stanford, he was a Technologist at the Advanced Deployable Structures Laboratory at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, where he developed and tested breakthrough designs for space structures, including deployable reflectarrays, starshades, and solar arrays.

  • Juan Blanch

    Juan Blanch

    Sr Research Engineer

    Current Research and Scholarly InterestsMy research focuses on the design of navigation integrity algorithms for safety critical applications (like air navigation and autonomous driving). I am interested in both the design of practical algorithms that provide the required safety margins, and in the theoretical limits on the performance of the integrity monitoring algorithms.

  • Brian Cantwell

    Brian Cantwell

    Edward C. Wells Professor in the School of Engineering and Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Emeritus

    BioProfessor Cantwell's research interests are in the area of turbulent flow. Recent work has centered in three areas: the direct numerical simulation of turbulent shear flows, theoretical studies of the fine-scale structure of turbulence, and experimental measurements of turbulent structure in flames. Experimental studies include the development of particle-tracking methods for measuring velocity fields in unsteady flames and variable density jets. Research in turbulence simulation includes the development of spectral methods for simulating vortex rings, the development of topological methods for interpreting complex fields of data, and simulations of high Reynolds number compressible and incompressible wakes. Theoretical studies include predictions of the asymptotic behavior of drifting vortex pairs and vortex rings and use of group theoretical methods to study the nonlinear dynamics of turbulent fine-scale motions. Current projects include studies of fast-burning fuels for hybrid propulsion and decomposition of nitrous oxide for space propulsion.

  • Fu-Kuo Chang

    Fu-Kuo Chang

    Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics

    BioProfessor Chang's primary research interest is in the areas of multi-functional materials and intelligent structures with particular emphases on structural health monitoring, intelligent self-sensing diagnostics, and multifunctional energy storage composites for transportation vehicles as well as safety-critical assets and medical devices. His specialties include embedded sensors and stretchable sensor networks with built-in self-diagnostics, integrated diagnostics and prognostics, damage tolerance and failure analysis for composite materials, and advanced multi-physics computational methods for multi-functional structures. Most of his work involves system integration and multi-disciplinary engineering in structural mechanics, electrical engineering, signal processing, and multi-scale fabrication of materials. His recent research topics include: Multifunctional energy storage composites, Integrated health management for aircraft structures, bio-inspired intelligent sensory materials for fly-by-feel autonomous vehicles, active sensing diagnostics for composite structures, self-diagnostics for high-temperature materials, etc.

  • Richard Christensen

    Richard Christensen

    Professor (Research) of Aeronautics and Astronautics and of Mechanical Engineering, Emeritus

    BioProfessor Christensen's research is concerned with the mechanics of materials. The behavior of polymers and polymeric fiber composites are areas of specialization. Of particular interest is the field of micro-mechanics that focuses on materials' functionality at intermediate-length scales between atomic and the usual macro scale. Applicable techniques involve the methods of homogenization for all types of composite materials. The intended outcomes of his research are useful means of characterizing the yielding, damage accumulation, and failure behavior of modern materials. A related website has been developed to provide critical evaluations for the mathematical failure criteria used with the various classes of engineering materials. Most of these materials types are employed in aerospace structures and products.

  • Simone D'Amico

    Simone D'Amico

    Associate Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics and, by courtesy, of Geophysics

    BioSimone D’Amico is Associate Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AA), W.M. Keck Faculty Scholar in the School of Engineering, and Professor of Geophysics (by Courtesy). He is the Founding Director of the Space Rendezvous Laboratory and Director of the AA Undergraduate Program. He received the B.S. and M.S. degrees from Politecnico di Milano (2003) and the Ph.D. degree from Delft University of Technology (2010). Before Stanford, Dr. D’Amico was research scientist and team leader at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) for 11 years. There he gave key contributions to formation-flying and proximity operations missions such as GRACE (NASA/DLR), PRISMA (OHB/DLR/CNES/DTU), TanDEM-X (DLR), BIROS (DLR) and PROBA-3 (ESA). His research aims at enabling future miniature distributed space systems for unprecedented remote sensing, space and planetary science, exploration and spaceflight sustainability. To this end he performs fundamental and applied research at the intersection of advanced astrodynamics, spacecraft Guidance, Navigation and Control (GNC), autonomy, decision making and space system engineering. Dr. D’Amico is institutional PI of three upcoming autonomous satellite swarm missions funded by NASA and NSF, namely STARLING, VISORS, and SWARM-EX. He is Fellow of AAS, Associate Fellow of AIAA, Associate Editor of AIAA JGCD, Advisor of NASA and several space startups. He was the recipient of several awards, including Best Paper Awards at IAF (2022), IEEE (2021), AIAA (2021), AAS (2019) conferences, the Leonardo 500 Award by the Leonardo da Vinci Society/ISSNAF (2019), FAI/NAA’s Group Diploma of Honor (2018), DLR’s Sabbatical/Forschungssemester (2012) and Wissenschaft Preis (2006), and NASA’s Group Achievement Award for the GRACE mission (2004).