Ron F. Blackwelder

Professor (retired)
Dept of Aerospace & Mechanical Engineering
University of Southern California

Ron graduated from the University of Colorado with a B.S. in Aerospace Sciences in 1964, spent a year at the Technische Hochschule in Munich and completed his Ph.D. at the Johns Hopkins University in Fluid Mechanics. His career spanned 42 years at USC where he conducted experimental research on aerodynamics, flight mechanics and the dynamics of transition and turbulence. Much of his research had a particular emphasis on turbulent eddies near a solid boundary that are responsible for the creation of drag on bodies moving through a gas or liquid. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship to conduct research at the Max Planck Institute for Fluid Mechanics in Göttingen, Germany and was a Professeur Associe for another year at the Institut National Polytechnique in Grenoble. He also spent extended time as a Senior Research Fellow, Center for Turbulence Research, Stanford University & NASA Ames and was a Visiting Professor in AES at the University of Colorado in 2001. Ron is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and an Associate Fellow of the AIAA. He consulted extensively with various companies and hold several patents. He taught a large range of undergraduate and graduate courses during his career and received teaching and mentoring awards from the USC Viterbi School of Engineering and from the University of Southern California.