Faculty News
A Distinctive Achievement Donghyun You Wins $512,000 Young Investigator Award
A three-year grant of $512,000 will support You’s efforts to develop biologically inspired propulsion designs that could benefit Navy vessels, as well as hydro and wind energy systems. Only 21 such awards were made by the Navy nationwide in 2011, based on more than 270 applications.
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With this honor, You has helped MechE achieve an incredible milestone. He is the twelfth MechE junior faculty member to win a Young Investigator or NSF Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award since 2004. These are the most prestigious honors for young researchers at U.S. universities.
“This new award signals an amazing achievement for
Professor You, and also for the entire Department of Mechanical Engineering,” says Department Head Nadine Aubry. “I don’t know of any other program whose assistant professors have systematically won so many Young Investigator and CAREER Awards. This impressive record is really a testament to the outstanding quality of the young faculty members here at MechE. I am so proud of them.” “Professor You’s advanced work in fluid dynamics and propulsion exemplifies the kind of leading-edge work that all of our faculty are involved in,” notes Aubry. “I congratulate him for changing the future of propulsion systems, while exposing his team in the Computational Flow Physics and Engineering Lab to research that is truly world-class—and has the potential for a large impact.”
Innovative Technologies, Inspired by Nature You’s research proposal to the ONR is entitled “Biologi- cally Inspired Design of Novel Fluid-Dynamic Kinematics for Ocean Propulsion.” One of the primary objectives of this advanced research is to develop a computational capability for predicting fluid-structure interaction problems in nature at a very high level of fidelity. Armed with these predictions, design engineers can then create innovative and powerful ocean propulsion systems.
These next-generation propulsion systems will actually be
inspired by biological phenomena in order to optimize their performance and energy efficiency. For example, a pitching- rolling or flapping hydrofoil—with kinematics inspired by the natural motions of fish or cetaceans—can be mathematically optimized and employed for the propulsion and maneuvering of ocean vehicles.
“For many engineering problems, we find that nature’s solutions are quite often smarter, more energy-efficient, agile, adaptable, fault-tolerant, environmentally friendly, and multifunctional than those developed by any engineers or scientists,” says You. “There is much to learn from nature, especially animals, as we develop next-generation energy systems, as well as novel flow control and optimization algorithms.” In addition to ocean vessels, You’s research findings will be used to optimize the perfor- mance of both ocean and wind energy conver- sion systems, helping to address such chal- lenges as turbulent flows and acoustic noise.
Critical Support for Young Investigators Created in 1985, the Office of Naval Research’s Young Inves- tigator Program identifies and supports outstanding scientists and engineers who are in their first or second full-time tenure- track or tenure-track-equivalent academic appointment—and who show exceptional promise for doing creative research. “The Young Investigator Program is an important part of the Department of the Navy’s science, technology, engineer- ing, and mathematics (STEM) outreach programs,” says Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus. “To our benefit, it attracts outstanding new faculty researchers to naval- relevant research. The program also plays a major role in the Navy’s outreach efforts by supporting diverse faculty at a critical point in their careers.”•
CARNEGIE MECH 5
ssistant Professor Donghyun You, who joined MechE in 2009, recently received a prestigious Young Investigator Award from the Department of the Navy’s Office of Naval Research (ONR).
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