Professor Ian Waitz has been named the first Hunsaker Professor of Aeronautics in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. The appointment enables the professor to "make, or continue to make, contributions at the forefront of important fields of aerospace sciences."
The chair is named for Jerome Hunsaker, the pioneering aviation engineer who founded the department as the first aerodynamics and aircraft engineering program in the United States. Waitz continues Hunsaker's pioneering aviation spirit with his work in propulsion, fluid mechanics, thermodynamics, reacting flows, aeroacoustics and, in particular, aspects of these disciplines that relate to environmental issues associated with aircraft design and operation.
Waitz is the director of the Partnership for AiR Transportation Noise and Emissions Reduction, an MIT-based leading aviation cooperative research organization sponsored by the Federal Aviation Administration, NASA and Transport Canada.
A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on May 2, 2007 (download PDF).
