Fazle Hussain

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A. K. M. Fazle Hussain is a Cullen Distinguished Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Physics, and Geosciences and the director of the Institute of Fluid Dynamics & Turbulence at the University of Houston.^[1]

Following his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering at Stanford University in 1969 under the guidance of William C. Reynolds, Hussain was a post-doctoral fellow at the Johns Hopkins University with Leslie S. G. Kovasznay and Stanley Corrsin.^[2] He joined the University of Houston as an assistant professor in 1971; became a full professor in 1976; a Distinguished University Professor in 1985; and a Cullen Distinguished Professor in 1989.^[3] He also built the highly-regarded Aerodynamics & Turbulence Laboratory at the University of Houston, where he has trained many successful researchers and performed seminal experiments in jets, mixing layers, wakes, and pipes, focusing primarily on coherent structures (the underlying order in the disorder of fluid turbulence), flow noise, vortex dynamics and vortex-turbulence interactions - innovating measurement techniques using hot-wire and holographic particle velocimetries.^[4] He has also extensively employed computational and analytical tools, to obtain results not achievable by state-of-the-art measurement technology, and has further developed fundamental vortex dynamics concepts.^[5]

Regarded as world's leading authority in his areas of research, Hussain has presented over 240 seminars, over 130 invited lectures at major conferences worldwide, over 150 talks at the American Physical Society meetings and over 200 papers in prestigious journals.^[6]^[7] He has recently been involved in the areas of nanomechanics and energy.^[8] His numerous papers are widely cited - over 100 citations each of many of his papers and 654 citations of his landmark paper, "On the identification of a vortex," published in the Journal of Fluid Mechanics in 1995.^[9]^[10] Altogether, his archival papers have well over 5000 citations, which is an exceptional record in the field of fundamental fluid mechanics.^[11] He has been a visiting scholar at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at Cambridge, the Indian Institute of Science, and the Institute of Mechanics in China.^[12]

Hussain is a fellow of the American Physical Society, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and has been awarded the highest awards of each of these societies (the Freeman Scholar Award of ASME in 1984, the Fluid Dynamics Prize of APS in 1998, the Fluids Engineering Award of ASME in 2000, and the Fluid Dynamics Award of AIAA in 2002).^[13]^[14]^[15]^[16] He has served as the Chair of the APS Division of Fluid Dynamics in 2002, the Technical Chair of the 1999 AIAA Fluid Dynamics Conference, and on numerous scientific panels and committees in the USA and worldwide.^[17]

Elected to the US National Academy of Engineering in 2001, Hussain now serves an 8-year term on the Executive Committee of the Mechanical Engineering section of NAE.^[18] He also serves on the US National Research Council committee: An Independent Assessment of Nation's Wake Turbulence R&D Program.^[19]^[20] He was elected to TWAS (the academy of sciences for the developing world) in 1997 and the Bangladesh Academy of Sciences in 2003.^[21] He has also been awarded several prestigious national honors by the Prime Minister of his native Bangladesh.^[22] Widely accepted as a pioneer and leader in fluid dynamics, Hussain devotes his time for promoting science and technology worldwide, and for developing international collaboration.

At the University of Houston, Hussain has been recognized with numerous honors, which include: the 1985 Research Excellence Award (first recipient), the 1999 Sigma Xi Award, and the 2007 Esther Farfel Award (the highest honor awarded by the University of Houston for combined excellence in teaching, research and service).^[23]^[24]