Harindra Joseph Fernando, the Wayne and Diana Murdy Family Professor of Engineering, has been selected to receive an honorary doctorate from the University of Dundee, a preeminent public research university in the United Kingdom based in the city and Royal burgh of Dundee, Scotland. The presentation of the doctor of laws honoris causa will take place as part of the university’s summer graduation program in late June.
Fernando is an expert in fluid mechanics, specifically in atmospheric and oceanic flows as well as industrial flow involving density variations. According to [Professor] Sir Peter Downes, principal and vice-chancellor at the university, he is being recognized for his outstanding achievements and leadership in the field of environmental science and policy research, as well as the role model he has provided students and staff at Dundee as part of the ongoing research at that university.
Fernando is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Meteorological Society, American Physical Society, and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. He is also an elected member of the European Academy and received docteur honoris causa form University of Grenoble, France, in 2014. Prior to joining the Notre Dame faculty, he was a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering and the (founding) director of the Arizona Board of Regent’s Center for Environmental Fluid Dynamics at Arizona State University with an appointment in the School of Sustainability.
A College of Engineering faculty member since 2010 — serving joint appointments in civil & environmental engineering & earth sciences and aerospace and mechanical engineering, Fernando has published more than 250 archival journal papers spanning some 60 different international journals covering basic fluid dynamics, experimental methods, oceanography, atmospheric sciences, environmental sciences and engineering, air pollution, alternative energy sources, acoustics, heat transfer, hydraulics and fluids engineering.
Currently, he is leading two large Department of Defense initiatives, one on complex-terrain weather with relevance to aviation and the other on air-sea interactions in the Indian Ocean with application to climate and navigation. In addition, he is the lead U.S. investigator of the recently funded Perdigão project, a joint wind energy research effort between the European Union and the U.S. National Science Foundation.
He is the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Environmental Fluid Mechanics, an editor of the journals Theoretical and Computational Fluid Dynamics and Non-Linear Processes in Geophysics of the European Geophysical Union, and serves on the editorial boards of the journals Physical Review Fluids (American Physical Society) and Hydro-Environmental Research (International Association of Hydraulics Research).
Originally published by Nina Welding at news.nd.edu on May 17, 2016.