Agarwal wins 2024 Thermal and Fluids Engineering Award

The award honors significant contributions to thermal and fluids engineering

Beth Miller 03.05.2024

Ramesh Agarwal, the William Palm Professor of Engineering in the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, has been selected to receive the 2024 Thermal and Fluids Engineering Award from the American Society of Thermal and Fluids Engineers.

The award is given to an individual for their significant and sustained contributions to the fields of thermal and fluids engineering. Agarwal will receive the award in April 2024.

Earlier this year, Agarwal was awarded the SAE International Award for Aerospace Innovation.

Agarwal applies computational fluid dynamics to solve problems in mechanical and aerospace engineering, and energy and environment. Prior to joining the faculty at Washington University in 2001, Agarwal was chair of the Aerospace Engineering Department at Wichita State University from 1994-1996 and the executive director of National Institute for Aviation Research from 1996-2001. From 1994 to 2001, he was also the Bloomfield Distinguished Professor at Wichita State University.

Previously, he worked in various scientific and managerial positions at McDonnell-Douglas Research Laboratories in St. Louis, finally as program director and McDonnell Douglas Fellow (1978-1994); as an NRC Research Associate at NASA Ames Research Center (1976-1978); and as a principal research engineer at Rao and Associates in Palo Alto, California (1975-1976).

Over the past 48 years, Agarwal has worked in computational fluid dynamics, computational magnetohydrodynamics, and electromagnetics, computational aeroacoustics, multidisciplinary design and optimization, turbomachinery and pumps, rarefied gas dynamics and hypersonic flows, bio-fluid dynamics, and flow and flight control. He also has devoted some of his efforts to renewable energy systems (wind and biomass) and clean energy technologies of chemical looping combustion (CLC) and carbon, capture, utilization and sequestration (CCUS). He is the author and co-author of more than 600 publications and serves on the editorial board of more than 20 journals. Agarwal serves on many professional, government and industrial advisory committees and is a Fellow of nearly 30 societies including AIAA, ASME, IEEE, SAE, AAAS, APS and ASEE. He has received the highest awards from AIAA, ASME, SAE and ASEE.

The McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis promotes independent inquiry and education with an emphasis on scientific excellence, innovation and collaboration without boundaries. McKelvey Engineering has top-ranked research and graduate programs across departments, particularly in biomedical engineering, environmental engineering and computing, and has one of the most selective undergraduate programs in the country. With 165 full-time faculty, 1,420 undergraduate students, 1,614 graduate students and 21,000 living alumni, we are working to solve some of society’s greatest challenges; to prepare students to become leaders and innovate throughout their careers; and to be a catalyst of economic development for the St. Louis region and beyond.