Mechanical Engineering Professor earns two prestigious awards

Banafsheh Seyed-Aghazadeh receives over $1M in grants from the NSF and the Office of Naval Research to support research efforts in fluidstructure interactions

Banafsheh Seyed-Aghazadeh, assistant professor of Mechanical Engineering at UMass Dartmouth's College of Engineering, was awarded an intended $506,972 CAREER award granted by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and $508,936 from the Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Program (ONR YIP) less than four months apart.

The NSF grant will directly support her project, "FluidStructure-Surface Interactions of Flexible Bodies at the AirWater Interface." The ONR grant will provide Seyed-Aghazadeh with laboratory support for research in aerodynamics and Fluid-Structure Interactions in flexible structures.

"I am honored that my group's research activities have received such recognitions via such prestigious awards. These awards will provide significant support to my group's innovative basic research into fundamentals of Fluid-Structure Interactions problems with anticipated impact on the scientific research and naval aviation community," said Seyed-Aghazadeh.

The National Science Foundation calls the CAREER program "The most prestigious award in support of early-career faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education."

"Within this project, our goal is to unveil a new physical phenomenon of fluid-structure-surface interaction that would transform our understanding of the complex physics behind the coupling between the dynamics of flexible structures operating near free surfaces of the fluid flow," said SeyedAghazadeh. "The results from this study would open further avenues for research and applications in a wide range including, but not limited to soft robotics, bio-inspired propulsion, ocean sensing, and energy harvesting."

The ONR YIP has only been awarded to 32 early-career faculty members nationwide this year. According to their website, the objectives of this program are to attract outstanding faculty members of Institutions of Higher Education to the Department of the Navy's Science and Technology research program, to support their research, and to encourage their teaching and research careers.

"The focus of this project is to create Fluid-Structure Interactions experimental-numerical campaigns to characterize the flowinduced instability and associated 3D flow physics of such flexible wings. The findings from this project will leverage our understanding of the aerodynamic performance of flexible wings that can be implemented towards the development of innovative and effective flow control strategies, which is detrimental to the aircraft performance and its structural reliability," said Seyed-Aghazadeh.

"I am excited to see my lab's integrated research and educational activities once again manifest another example of UMass Dartmouth's growing footprint in research and student mentorship activities, empowering the blue economy in the SouthCoast of Massachusetts."