Mechanical Engineering Professor Eric Pardyjak recently achieved the prestigious merit of becoming an ASME (American Society of Mechanical Engineers) Fellow. A Fellow, one who has attained a membership grade of distinction at the time of advancement, shall be a corporate member of the Society, shall have been responsible for significant engineering achievements, and shall not have less than 10 years of active practice and 10 years of corporate membership in ASME.
Pardyjak’s research interests are in the area of fundamental and applied fluid mechanics. In particular, the application of fundamental turbulence concepts to studies in environmental atmospheric flows in complex terrain (i.e., urban and mountainous). Interests include both experimental (field and laboratory based) and computation research. More recent interests include optimization of sustainable urban design for air quality and energy efficiency. He directs the Environmental Fluid Dynamics Lab, which attempts to further the understanding of transport phoenomena in the natural world. To this end, the laboratory employs a variety of state-of-the-art scientific investigation techniques including: large scale field measurements (both Urban and Natural Environment), numerical modeling and simulation, and laboratory scale measurements.
All in mechanical engineering, Pardyjak received his B.S. from Michigan State University, his M.S. from the University of Wisconsin and his Ph.D. from Arizona State University, before serving as a postdoc at Los Alamos National Laboratory and later joining the tenure-track faculty in the U Department of Mechanical Engineering in 2001. He is a world-renown researcher with over 2,500 publication citations, 10 Ph.D. students graduated, 15 M.S. thesis students graduated, along with an impressive teaching and service record. Student evaluations have placed Pardyjak’s teaching among the College of Engineering’s top instructors consecutively. Among other awards he was a 2016-2017 Fulbright Scholar recipient. The Fulbright is an international exchange program to increase international understanding of global issues. Pardyjak studied turbulence and dispersion processes in France at Université de Toulouse Paul Sabatier in the Laboratoire d’Aérologie, where his papers related to improved understanding of physical processes as well as the development of new models that can be used by the scientific community and decision makers to better predict contaminant dispersion in mountain terrain.
To learn more about Prof. Pardyjak and his current research projects please visit the Environmental Fluid Dynamics Lab.