Biography

Professor Sankar is a Regents Professor in the Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. As Director of the School's Computational Fluid Dynamics Lab, he leads a research and education program focused on the modeling and simulation of unsteady viscous flow around helicopters, horizontal axis wind turbines, and turbo-machinery components. As the Associate Chair of the Undergraduate Programs, he coordinates undergraduate curriculum related activities. He teaches undergraduate and graduate level courses in the areas of aerodynamics, helicopter theory, wind energy, aerodynamic design, and computational aerodynamics.

Prior to joining the Georgia Tech faculty in 1982, Dr. Sankar worked at Lockheed Martin in Marietta, GA. While at Lockheed, he contributed to the development of 2-D and 3-D flow analyses that solve 3-D unsteady transonic flow over airfoils, wing-alone, wing-body, and complete aircraft configurations. He also extended 2-D transonic design methodologies to 3-D transonic wing and wing-body configurations. He also worked closely with researchers at Ford Motor Co on 3-D Navier-Stokes simulations of next generation automobile configurations.

Dr. Sankar is the author or co-author of more than 300 technical publications in the fields of spatially and temporally high order algorithm development, 3-D unsteady transonic flow over aircraft configurations, helicopter aerodynamics, compressor stall and surge, and aerodynamic design. He is an AIAA Fellow, a Technical Fellow of the American Helicopter Society, and a member of the American society of Mechanical Engineers.