Dr. Alexei Poludnenko, associate professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at Texas A&M University, has received the American Physical Society's (APS) 2016 François Frenkiel Award. The APS Division of Fluid Dynamics (DFD) presents this award to young investigators in recognition of significant contributions to fluid mechanics that have also been published during the previous year in either Physical Review Fluids or Physics of Fluids.
The international award was presented to Poludnenko during the 69th Annual DFD Meeting in Portland, Oregon, and consisted of $1,000, a certificate citing the accomplishment and travel/registration expenses to attend the annual meeting. Poludnenko was invited to present a plenary talk from his award-winning research "High-Speed Turbulent Reacting Flows: Intrinsic Flame Instability and its Effects on the Turbulent Cascade."
Poludnenko earned his Ph.D. in physics and astronomy from the University of Rochester in 2004, and worked as a research scientist at the University of Chicago (2004-07) and as a research associate/physicist at the Naval Research Laboratory (2007-16), before joining Texas A&M in the fall of 2016. His research in chemically reacting flow using high-performance computation complements and augments the combustion/propulsion/turbulence research in the department. Poludnenko is the second faculty member in the department to win this award. Dr. Diego Donzis, associate professor, received the prestigious award in 2013.