From a highly competitive pool of almost 14,000 applicants, 2,500 were selected to receive a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. Callahan Eshleman was one of them. He is a Ph.D. student in Laura Villafañe Roca’s Turbulent and Multiphase Flow Research Lab in The Grainger College of Engineering, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Written by Debra Levey Larson
Callahan Eshleman
From a highly competitive pool of almost 14,000 applicants, 2,500 were selected to receive a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. Callahan Eshleman was one of them. He is a Ph.D. student in Laura Villafañe Roca’s Turbulent and Multiphase Flow Research Lab in The Grainger College of Engineering, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Eshleman studies plume-surface interactions – the phenomena encountered when a rocket lands on an extraterrestrial surface.
“Using laser-based diagnostics, I am investigating supersonic flows impinging on a solid and granular surface at vacuum conditions,” Eshleman said. “I am also investigating the multi-phase flow phenomena which occur during these events, including erosion of a granular surface and measurement of the ejected mass.”
Eshleman said the work he is doing is both interesting to him and challenging.
“It presents a unique intersection between the topics in which I’m interested – optical diagnostics, space exploration and multiphase fluid mechanics.”
Eshleman earned his Bachelor of Science degree from North Carolina State University and began his Ph.D. program at Illinois last fall.