Smits wins the Batchelor prize 2020

The G K Batchelor Prize for 2020 is awarded to Professor Alexander J Smits, Eugene Higgins Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Princeton University. 

Professor Smits gave a prize lecture at the ICTAM conference in Milan in August 2020 (postponed to August 2021) watch his lecture below and read it here.

The prize was awarded after an international panel of experts considered some 85 nominations from researchers worldwide. This prestigious prize, sponsored by the Journal of Fluid Mechanics, is awarded every 4 years at the International Congress of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics to recognise the achievements of an active scientist who has made significant research contributions to fluid mechanics over the previous decade.

Professor Smits receives the prize for seminal contributions to our understanding of the structure of wall turbulence at very large Reynolds and Mach numbers, especially through the design of innovative experiments and measurement devices, and also for pioneering work on bio-inspired propulsion and on drag reduction using modified surfaces.

Professor Smits has received numerous honours and awards, has served on many academic, industrial and governmental panels, and has served on the editorial boards of several top journals, including his now being Editor-in-Chief of the AIAA Journal. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, and is also a Fellow of the American Physical Society, of the American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics, of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Commenting on his win, Professor Smits said:

“I am thrilled to be recognised by the Batchelor Prize, and would like to thank all the people at IUTAM and elsewhere who made it possible. Also, my sincere thanks to Cambridge University Press for initiating this prize, and for their continued sponsorship.”

Professor Smits will be giving his prize lecture during the International Congress of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics in Milan.

We would like to congratulate Professor Smits on this much-deserved distinction, and we invite you to enjoy free access to the selection of his papers below.

Undulatory and oscillatory swimming (Smits)

Scaling the propulsive performance of heaving and pitching foils (Floryan, Van Buren, Rowley, Smits)

Experiments on the structure and scaling of hypersonic turbulent boundary layers (Williams, Sahoo, Baumgartner, Smits)

Dynamic stall in vertical axis wind turbines: scaling and topological considerations (Buchner, Sora, Hoonery, Smits)

Canonical wall-bounded flows: how do they differ? (Smits)

On the logarithmic region in wall turbulence (Marusic, Monty, Hultmark, Smits)