
Lakshmi N Sankar
Professor Sankar is a Regents Professor and Sikorsky Professor in the Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. As Director of the School's Computational Fluid Dynamics Lab, he leads a research and education program focused on the modeling and simulation of unsteady viscous flow around aircraft, helicopters, horizontal axis wind turbines, and turbo-machinery components. He teaches undergraduate and graduate level courses in the areas of aerodynamics, helicopter theory, wind energy, aerodynamic design, and computational aerodynamics. Prior to joining the Georgia Tech faculty in 1982, Dr. Sankar worked at Lockheed Martin in Marietta, GA. While at Lockheed, he contributed to the development of 2-D and 3-D flow analyses that solve 3-D unsteady transonic flow over airfoils, wing-alone, wing-body, and complete aircraft configurations. He also extended 2-D transonic design methodologies to 3-D transonic wing and wing-body configurations. He also worked closely with researchers at Ford Motor Co on 3-D Navier-Stokes simulations of next generation automobile configurations. Dr. Sankar is the author or co-author of more than 400 technical publications in the fields of spatially and temporally high-order algorithm development, 3-D unsteady transonic flow over aircraft configurations, helicopter aerodynamics, compressor stall and surge, and aerodynamic design. He is an AIAA Fellow, a Technical Fellow of the American Helicopter Society, and a member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.
Lab/Collaborations:
- Vertical Lift Research Center of Excellence (VLRCOE)
- Computational Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (CFD)
- Center for 21st Century Universities
Disciplines:
- Aerodynamics & Fluid Mechanics
AE Multidisciplinary Research Areas:
- Large-Scale Computations, Data, and Analytics
- Education Ph.D., Aerospace Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, 1977.
- MSAE, Aerospace Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, 1975.
- B. Tech., Aeronautical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, India, 1973.
o Fellow, AIAA
o Technical Fellow, AHS
o Georgia Tech Award for Development of Graduate Research Assistants, 1997
o Sigma Gamma Tau Most valuable Professor Award 2005, 2006, 2007, 2015
o NASA Group Achievement Award, UH60 Airloads Workshop, June 2007
o NASA Space Act Software Release Award, 2003
o American Helicopter Society 2014 Howard Hughes Award (Team member, Research on Helicopter Icing)
o American Helicopter Society 2014 Augusta Westland Helicopter Fellowship Award (Team Member, Research under French-US Memorandum of Understanding)
o Dean George C. Griffin Faculty of the Year Award, 2014-2015
o Georgia Tech Women in Engineering Teaching Excellence Award, 2015
o Sikorsky Professor, 2018- Present.