Thomas C. Corke, Clark Equipment Professor of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering at the University of Notre Dame, has been selected to receive the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Aerodynamics Award for 2010. The award is presented annually in recognition of meritorious achievement in the field of applied aerodynamics and notable contributions in the development, application and evaluation of aerodynamic concepts and methods.
Corke will be honored at the AIAA Awards Luncheon during the Applied Aerodynamics Conference in Chicago this summer, where he will receive a bronze medal and certificate that reads, “For his strong commitment to academic and research achievement, consistent record of superior technical accomplishment and numerous experimental and computational contributions to aerodynamics.”
A faculty member since 1999, Corke’s research on plasmas has been emulated worldwide for flow control applications and includes a new type of plasma sensor designed for use in hypersonic Mach number, high enthalpy flows. He also is the author of Design of Aircraft, which has been adopted as the capstone design text in more than a dozen aerospace departments across the United States and in numerous programs around the world.
Corke is the founding director of Notre Dame’s Institute for Flow Physics and Control and director of the Hessert Laboratory for Aerospace Research. He specializes in the study of fluid mechanics, with research interests specifically related to hydrodynamic stability, transition of laminar flow to turbulent flow, aeroacoustics, computational fluid dynamics, applied turbulence control, unsteady flows, wind engineering and atmospheric diffusion, and wind tunnel design.
A fellow of the AIAA, the American Physical Society and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, Corke earned his bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees, all in mechanical and aerospace engineering, from the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT).
With more than 35,000 individual members worldwide in 65 regional sections and 75 countries, the AIAA brings together industry, academia, government, and private research organizations to advance engineering and science in aviation, space, and defense. It is the world’s largest technical society devoted to the global aerospace profession.