Director: Edward B. White, Ph.D.
Professor — Department of Aerospace Engineering
979.845.1028 | ebw@tamu.edu | LinkedIn

Edward White is a professor of Aerospace Engineering at Texas A&M University (TAMU) where he serves as the director of the Oran W. Nicks Low-Speed Wind Tunnel (LSWT) and the Klebanoff–Saric Wind Tunnel (KSWT). Prof. White joined TAMU in January 2007 after seven years as an assistant and associate professor at Case Western Reserve University (CWRU). Prof. White’s research focuses on wind-tunnel experiments on boundary layer stability related areas such as wind-turbine-blade aerodynamics. His work has been funded by grants from the U.S. Air Force, NASA, the National Science Foundation, Sandia National Laboratory, and various companies. He has supported the research of over 20 M.S. and Ph.D. students. Prof. White teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in aerodynamics, fluid dynamics, aerodynamic design, and experimental techniques. Prof. White is an Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and was the Technical Chair of its 2011 Fluid Dynamics Conference. He is also a member of the Technical Advisory Board of National Aerospace Solutions, LLC, that operates, maintains, and develops Test and Evaluation capabilities for the U.S. Air Force at Arnold Engineering Development Center in Tullahoma, TN, the National Full Scale Aerodynamics Complex at NASA Ames, and “Hypervelocity Tunnel 9” in White Oak, MD. Prof. White received his Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering from Arizona State University where he was involved in the swept-wing transition, stability and control studies. His M.S. and B.S. degrees are from CWRU.
Current Students

Ph.D. Student in Aerospace Engineering. His research is on the boundary-layer stability of variably-swept wings, supported by the NASA University Leadership Initiative. He earned an Honors Bachelor’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Utah in 2017. He enjoys BBQ, triathlons, and swimming.

Started working at the KSWT as a graduate student in September 2019, while he started a Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering at Texas A&M. He has a Mechanical Engineering degree and a M.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering from the Balseiro Institute (Argentina).

He comes from Mexico and earned his B.S. in Aerospace Engineering from Texas A&M University. He has been working at the KSWT since 2019 and is now pursuing a Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering.

Ph.D. student in Aerospace Engineering. His research focuses on the effects of roughness on boundary layer transition and rapid model manufacturing. He received a B.S. in Aerospace Engineering from Texas A&M University in May 2021.

He started his Ph.D. at the KSWT in fall 2021. Will achieved his Master of Engineering at the University of Sheffield in the UK, his home country.

He started working at the KSWT in January 2021. He works in vortex transition and with the tunnel’s data acquisition system. Ricky will graduate from Texas A&M with his B.S. in Aerospace Engineering in the spring of 2024.

She started working at the KSWT as an undergraduate in the summer of 2022. She will graduate from Texas A&M University with her B.S. in Aerospace Engineering in May 2024.
PhDs

Alexandre Berger – May 2020
Fundamental Mechanism of Turbulent Wedge Spreading

Robert Long – December 2017
Experiments on Dynamic Aeroelastic Response Of Wind Turbine Blades

Benjamin Wilcox – December 2016
Roughness Sensitivity Comparisons Of Wind Turbine Blade Sections

Jason Monschke – December 2015
Most-Critical Transient Disturbances

Robert Ehrmann – August 2014
Degradation of Wind-Turbine Blade Performance due to Roughness Contamination

Mathew Kuester – May 2014
Ph.D. Distributed Roughness Receptivity in a Flat Plate Boundary Layer
M.S. Acoustics in the Klebanoff–Saric Wind Tunnel: Background Identification, Forcing, and Active Control

Nicole Sharp – May 2014
Hypersonic Measurements of Roughness-Induced Transient Growth
Nicole Sharp authors fluid dynamics blog FYFD and runs her own science communication consulting company, helping scientists and engineers communicate their work to one another and the public. She is a AAAS IF/THEN Ambassador and serves on the United States National Committee for Theoretical and Applied Mechanics. Currently, she lives in Denver, where she enjoys board games, skiing, cycling, and making art.

Robert Downs – December 2012
Environmental Influences on Crossflow Instability

Jason Schmucker – August 2012
Experimental Investigation of Wind-Forced Drop Stability

Nicholas Denissen – 2011
Roughness-Induced Transient Growth: Continuous-Spectrum Receptivity and Secondary Instability Analysis

Lauren Hunt
Master students

Colton Finke – December 2021
His research, funded by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, focused on incorporating temperature compensation in the calibration of cross-style hotwires to enable multi-component velocity measurements of the flow field. He received a B.S. in Aerospace Engineering from Texas A&M University in 2019.

Hugo Giordano – May 2021
Drop Interface Shape Reconstruction using Stereoscopic Speckle Measurements

Roger Simon – May 2021
Vortex Shedding and Interface Oscillations of Wind-Forced Liquid Drops

Madeline McMillan – December 2019
Modeling Distributed Roughness Using Effective Surfaces

Krista Cratty – December 2017
Dynamic Wind Tunnel Load and Attitude Measurements using State Estimation

Justin Freels – August 2012
An Examination of Configurations for Using Infrared Thermography to Measure Boundary Layer Transition