UC aerospace engineering student turns his dreams into reality

Aerospace has always excited me. When I was a kid, my dad bought me an airplane toy that I would sit on and pretend I was flying. My dream of flying did not come true until I decided to pursue higher education. For my undergraduate degree, I studied mechanical engineering because at that point in my career, it was the closest I could get to aerospace. As a kid, I was always drawn to math, physics, research and flying. Putting these interests together, the path I saw before me was aerospace engineering. 

My research deals with an experiment called particle image velocimetry (PIV), which is an essential part of aerospace engineering. To simply describe it, we take images of particles in a fluid or gas flow, then analyze them to get the physics of the flow field. Aerospace engineers need to understand this data to make important decisions during the research and development stages of their work. I am focused on the analysis part of this experiment, meaning most of my time is spent in front of a computer trying to make PIV a better tool for engineers.

The idea for this research came to be when my mentor, Dr. Paul Orkwis, was working on a paper for the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), in which the team observed some inherent uncertainties in the PIV experiment. Orkwis is a mathemetician, so the things we see from a physicists perspective, he can see from a simple, mathematic perspective. These uncertainties are what we plan on estimating accurately with the tools we are developing. This has not been done before, because most of the industry has been focused on working and developing better particles and tools, but my work looks at it from a more backward approach. For instance, we start estimating uncertainties after the experiment is done so we have ample data to work with. This was possible from looking at these experiments from a mathematic lens. I am truly grateful for Dr. Orkwis and the amount of freedom I have been given to take this research in my direction. 

My affinity for academia is so strong that I plan to spend my life here. I love the claassroom environment, interacting with students from different backgrounds, it is truly a unique place. As I teach, I also learn a lot in return and it has been a wonderful experience that i want to continue. I also enjoy exploring new fields such as AI. Aerospace engineering is at the forefront of innovation and exploring the idea of using these fields excites me. I strongly believe that being in academia will allow me to achieve my life goals. Currently, I have been putting time into creating lectures while wrapping up my doctoral degree. Overall, my goal is to come back to academia; I just love the atmosphere here!

In my free time, I like to travel a lot. I have been to more than 25 states in America, mostly on road trips. I do some volunteering activities to help local businesses as well, and during winter, I hand out food and supplies to homeless people around the city of Cincinnati. I founded the UC Piloting Club in 2019, which caters to piloting as a hobby or just for curious students of UC. 

Featured image at top: Dilip Kalagotla. Photo/provided