Paul DesJardin elected Fellow of ASME

By Nicole Capozziello

ASME Fellows are conferred annually and Fellow is the highest grade of membership. DesJardin, a professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, is one of only 3,512 Fellows out of 94,307 ASME members.

“Paul has contributed so much to the department over the past 20 years, most recently by being instrumental in securing Department of Energy funding to create the Center for Hybrid Rocket Exascale Simulation Technology (CHREST), which will focus on hybrid rocket technology,” says Francine Battaglia, chair of the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. “Paul’s election to Fellow of ASME not only highlights his accomplishments but is a positive reflection of the outstanding faculty that work in our department.”

As director of CHREST, DesJardin leads an interdisciplinary team of mechanical, aerospace and computer engineers to leverage advances in both exascale computing and machine learning to better understand the turbulent mixing and fuel entrainment in the combustion environment that is critical to the operation of hybrid rocket motors. The Center was recently established at UB with an $8.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy.

DesJardin is also director of the Combustion and Energy Transport Laboratory. His research interests are in numerical modeling and simulation of strongly radiating, turbulent, multiphase reacting flows and fluid-structure interactions. Application areas include fire phenomena, explosives and the response of composite materials in abnormal thermal and mechanical environments. 

“Being elected Fellow of ASME is truly an honor. I’m proud to be recognized by an organization that does so much for so many students and engineering professionals,” says DesJardin, who joined ASME in 1994 as a graduate student.

 As a professional member, he has served on the K-11 Fire and Combustion Technical Committee, and participated in and organized several technical sessions for the International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition (IMECE) and the National Heat Transfer conferences.

His career accomplishments include over 100 journal articles and conference presentations and $16.2 million in research funding. He has received the Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching, the highest teaching award from the State University of New York system, in 2009 and a National Science Foundation CAREER award in 2004. DesJardin was elected Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) in 2016.

DesJardin is a UB alum who received his BS in aerospace engineering in 1993. He earned his MS and PhD in mechanical engineering from Purdue University and returned to UB in 2002. 

About ASME

Founded in 1990, The American Society of Mechanical Engineers is a nonprofit professional organization that strives to advance engineering for the benefit of humanity. Its members hail from more than 140 countries.