What was your greatest challenge?

I would say the hardest part of the PhD was trying to maintain resolve when things weren’t going my way. There were so many times during the program when we couldn’t figure out a piece of software or an algorithm, or when we had to wait for lab equipment to be serviced, or when an experimental part we had designed didn’t work as expected. All of these events were very frustrating and it was difficult to maintain motivation to keep pushing, to get up the next day, get back into the office/lab and keep going.

Developing a routine of when I would work vs. when I would spend time on other activities was instrumental in finding motivation every day to continue. Over the second and third years of my PhD, I tried my best to establish a set work schedule along with a focus on health, well-being, and musical practice outside of the office/lab. This method really helped me maintain my resolve and get to the end of the dissertation research.

If you could do it over, what would you do differently?

With everything I have learned now, I think I would have approached some problems during the early parts of my PhD a little bit differently so that I would not have had as many weeks of research-block in my head. For example, in my first year, I was working on writing a piece of computational simulation software of a type that I had never written before. I spent at least a month or more trying to understand the ins and outs of that type of software, but the most progress came when I just dove in and started writing some code and testing bits of it at a time. While that approach doesn’t work for everything (especially experiments where planning is important for the purpose of safety), I wish I would have dove into computational work like this more bravely earlier in the PhD. Now I know that doing that can feel perilous at first, but actually leads to a better understanding of the project and how to succeed in it.

Describe a break-through moment in your research.

We were attempting to use low-order circulation-based methods to model the performance of aero-propulsive systems. I wrote a code to predict the performance of aero-propulsive systems back in Spring 2022, which embedded circulation on the boundaries of the propulsive wake behind the aero-propulsive system.

The breakthrough moment came two years later when we performed particle-image velocimetry in the wake region behind an aero-propulsive experimental model mounted in the low-speed wind tunnel at the Aerodynamics Research Laboratory.

Analysis of the PIV data showed that when comparing directly between experiment and computational simulation, the embedded circulation values in the propulsive wake were almost the same for well-behaved cases. This result demonstrated that we really had validated our understanding of how circulation manifests in the wake of aero-propulsive systems and how that circulation influences the lifting performance of the system.

Outside of your research, what did you do for fun?

I’m an avid Indian classical music singer, so one of the most enjoyable activities I participated in was joining the classical music Registered Student Organization SPICMACAY.

I gave a number of concerts across campus and it was a great way to make friends who shared my passion for music and practice my craft with other talented vocalists and instrumentalists.

What's next in your career?

I’ll be working as an aerodynamics and propulsion engineer at Boeing’s Advanced Concepts research team in Long Beach, California. My projects will likely include aerodynamic analysis of novel future aircraft concepts, aero-propulsive integration, and some sustainability work as well.