Faculty Appointment Announcement

The appointment

of

Srinath Ekkad

to the

Commonwealth Professor

for

Aerospace Propulsion Systems

at

Virginia Tech’s

College of Engineering

The Virginia Tech Board of Visitors has conferred the Commonwealth Professor for Aerospace Propulsion Systems to Srinath Ekkad of mechanical engineering. The Commonwealth Professor for Aerospace Propulsion Systems professorship recognizes research excellence and recipients hold the position for a renewable five-year term.

Prior to joining the Virginia Tech faculty in 2007, Ekkad was an associate professor at Louisiana State University and a senior project engineer in the Turbines Department at Rolls-Royce Allison Engine Co. He received his bachelor’s degree from Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University of India in 1989, a master’s degree from Arizona State University in 1991, and a Ph.D. from Texas A&M University in 1995.

Ekkad has focused his research on the development of highly accurate, two-dimensional, high-resolution surface heat transfer measurements for complex geometries.

He is the Virginia Tech director of the Commonwealth Center for Aerospace Propulsion Systems (CCAPS), a joint partnership between Virginia Tech, the University of Virginia, and Rolls-Royce, collaborating on specific research of aerospace propulsion at Rolls-Royce.

Ekkad has received more than $8 million in external research funding grants, approximately $3.2 million of which has come during his time at Virginia Tech from various benefactors including the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation and several corporations.

In 2010, Ekkad was named a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), the highest-elected grade of the society’s membership. He received the 2006 ASME Journal of Heat Transfer Outstanding Reviewer award, and in 2004, he was the first recipient of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers’ Bergles- Rohsenow Young Investigator in Heat Transfer award.