ME faculty members Kiran Bhaganagar, Associate Professor and Chris Combs, Assistant Professor team with Geosciences Faculty to receive a 3 million dollar funding from NASA to develop a new interdisciplinary Center for Advanced Measurements in Advanced Environments(NASA-CAMEE).
The UTSA NASA CAMEE center will enhance NASA’s efforts to develop a diverse workforce in earth system sciences, remote sensing technologies, computational fluid dynamics and hiogh fidelity modeling of the environment, and experimental fluid mechanics in support of NASA’s Science, Aeronautics, and Space Technology Mission Directorates. The UTSA team also anticipates training 64 highly skilled professionals in STEM disciplines to support NASA’s mission. Associate Professor Kiran Bhaganagar, , Associate Fellow of American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), a mechanical engineer, will lead the efforts on developing large-scale computational models simulating the extreme events in the oceans and atmosphere. These models will generate unprecedented data on extreme events occurring in the atmosphere and oceans. The models will integrate the data from NASA satellites and mobile sensors. Christopher Combs, a Dee Howard Endowed Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, who will investigate how the extreme hypersonic flow conditions experienced during atmospheric reentry will impact the design of NASA flight vehicles. To investigate extreme condition in the environment – tornadoes, more forest fires, heat waves, and droughts, NASA and UTSA will collaborate to push the boundaries of current measurement and modeling technology by conducting research in harsh and extreme environments. They will also study the challenging conditions produced when travelling at hypersonic speeds.