Engineering Professor Awarded Air Force Fellowship
Last Updated on May 16, 2017 at 12:00 AM
Originally published May 16, 2017
By University Communications
UTEP Communications
Vinod Kumar, Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, has been awarded a fellowship through the U.S. Air Force Research Lab Summer Faculty Fellowship Program. Diego Lozano, a graduate student in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, will join Kumar to form a student-faculty team.
They will work with Air Force Research Lab scientists to analyze the strong turbulence effects on laser and speckle propagation, which play an important role in understanding and designing futuristic Directed Energy (DE) technologies. They plan to use Department of Defense experimental and supercomputing resources during 8-12 weeks in Maui, Hawaii, this summer.
“I am looking forward to it,” Kumar said. “It will require lots of work with data and data analytics, but at the end I hope to make a contribution to the Air Force and the science and engineering field in general.”
The nationwide program offers hands-on exposure to Air Force research challenges through residencies at participating Air Force research facilities for full-time science, mathematics and engineering faculty at U.S. colleges and universities.
Kumar will conduct his research assignment at the Air Force Maui Optical & Supercomputing Site (AMOS). The location is the sister site for Kirtland Air Force Base out of Albuquerque and houses one-of-a-kind facilities – the Maui Space Surveillance System (MSSS), a state-of-the-art electro-optical facility, and the Maui High Performance Computing Center, which houses one of the most powerful computer systems in the Department of Defense.
This program is sponsored by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and is administered by Systems Plus, which provides the oversight and administrative structure for the selection and appointment of applicants.