Iain D. Boyd is the Director of the Center for National Security Initiatives and the H.T. Sears Memorial Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder. He received a PhD in aeronautics and astronautics (1988) from the University of Southampton in England. He worked for four years at NASA Ames Research Center in the areas of aerothermodynamics and space propulsion. Dr. Boyd was a faculty member in mechanical and aerospace engineering at Cornell University for six years, and a professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Michigan for 20 years. His research interests involve the development and application of physical models and computational methods for analysis of nonequilibrium gas and plasma dynamics processes in aerospace systems. He has authored over 200 journal articles, more than 300 conference papers, and a book entitled “Nonequilibrium Gas Dynamics and Molecular Simulation.” Dr. Boyd is a Fellow of the American Institute for Aeronautics & Astronautics (AIAA), and has received the 1998 AIAA Lawrence Sperry Award, and the 2018 AIAA Thermophysics Award. He is also a Fellow of the American Physical Society and of the Royal Aeronautical Society. Dr. Boyd serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Thermophysics and Heat Transfer and Physical Review Fluids.
Dr. Boyd was awarded the Chief of Staff of the Air Force Award for Exceptional Public Service for his leadership role in the Air Force Scientific Advisory
Board (AFSAB).