Tamer Zaki, Johns Hopkins University has recently joined the Journal of Fluid Mechanics Editorial Board for JFM Rapids. To celebrate, Tamer participated in a Q&A with the Journal.

Journal of Fluid Mechanics: What originally drew you to, or excites you about fluid mechanics?

Tamer Zaki: Fluid motion is intriguing, especially when patterns emerge due to instabilities or when coherent eddies are visible within otherwise chaotic flow.  In turbulent flows, the wide range of spatial scales interact and energy is transferred from one to another, and each of these scales has its temporal “rhythm”.  There is beauty in how all the spatial and temporal scales of turbulence evolve, and how their evolution is precisely and elegantly described by mathematics. I can’t help but marvel at the compactness of the equations that govern fluid motion, whether it’s creeping or streaming, laminar or turbulent, on micro or geophysical scales.

JFM: Among current research, what papers do you most look forward to reading?

TZ: I look forward to reading papers that start with interesting observations of new fluid dynamical phenomena, especially ones that defy our intuition, and then proceed to explain the dynamics by simplifying the governing equations.  The ideas from these papers often become woven into our fluid dynamical intuition.

JFM: What are you currently working on that you’d like to tell us about?

TZ: Often studies of turbulence are concerned with predicting, or forecasting, the flow evolution.  An alternative standpoint is what I like to call the observer perspective: we start from observations of turbulence or of events of interest and attempt to determine their genesis.  This back-in-time problem enables us to study fundamental characteristics of turbulence.  For example, we can examine the region in the earlier flow that ultimately influences a particular measurement, and how this region expands in backward time.  This idea is the foundation of data assimilation, where we combine measurement and the governing equations to discover more of the flow than the measurements themselves.  Of course the chaos of turbulence tries to obfuscate this discovery, which makes for a truly enjoyable puzzle. 

JFM: In which areas of Fluid Mechanics research do you expect to see growth in the next ten to twenty years?

TZ: Our community is engaged in research that directly tackles some of the most pressing societal challenges, including energy efficiency, sustainability, and climate change.  As concerns related to these areas continue to amplify, I expect that our research activity will continue to expand in order to meet these challenges.  In terms of methodology, we are witnessing a significant acceleration in our ability to collect measurements and to use data.  I expect that techniques that fuse measurement and computations to be a key enabler of progress, both when tackling the large societal challenges as well as when it comes to basic fluid-mechanics research. 

JFM: Why should authors publish a JFM Rapid?

TZ: A JFM Rapid is an opportunity for the authors to highlight a high-impact and timely discovery. The visibility among the community and the sharp message position JFM Rapid papers to set the direction of dynamic research areas and to catalyze new activities.

Concise, high impact research in Journal of Fluid Mechanics

• Fast: First decision in 30 days
• Concise: Clear and complete 10-page articles
• Timely: Exciting results with exceptional impact
• Dedicated: Editors deal exclusively with Rapids submissions
• Streamlined: Prioritized peer review and rapid online publication