Professor Maziar Hemati Receives Young Investigator Program Award from AFOSR
AEM assistant professor Maziar Hemati was recently awarded the Young Investigator Program (YIP) award from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR). Prof. Hemati was among 31 scientists and engineers to receive the three-year grant, out of a pool of over 290 proposals this year.
Scientists and engineers at research institutions who have received Ph.D. or equivalent degrees within the past seven years are eligible to submit a research proposal. Participants must also show an exceptional ability and promise for conducting basic research of interest to the Air Force.
Hemati’s research focuses on reducing transient energy growth in shear flows using sensor-based output feedback control. “We will extend the findings of this work to more complicated flows,” Hemati states, “we want to prevent the flow from transitioning to a high-drag turbulent state.”
Speaking with Hemati further he added, “There’s a lot of physics that will be uncovered.” When asked about why his research is important, he briefly discussed the shortcomings of past approaches, “they have performance limitations that have been overlooked. We want more robust strategies that have performance guarantees.”
Hemati earned a Ph.D. from UCLA and worked as a post-doctoral research associate at Princeton University prior to joining the AEM department at the University of Minnesota
Hemati is grateful for all the support he has received throughout his work and hopes to continue this research in more inclusive ways, “I’m hopeful that we will be able to get other researchers in fluid mechanics to adopt systems and control theory more broadly.” He also added, “The department has been really supportive. My students, in particular, have been working very hard to help me get this research off the ground.”
The Air Force Office of Scientific Research is awarding approximately $13.9 million in grants for selected scientists to continue their work with the hope to broaden their knowledge of the Air Force’s research program.
(Professor Hemati’s research team– from bottom to top, Maziar Hemati, Yiyang Sun, Mengying (Mia) Wang, Huaijin (Grace) Yao, Aniketh Kalur (right), Debraj Bhattacharjee (left))