Department of Mechanical Engineering

Jason Rabinovitch, an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, has been selected to be a member of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Associate Fellows Class of 2024. AIAA is the world’s largest professional society for aerospace engineering.

Rabinovitch has been honored for his outstanding contributions to the AIAA Thermophysics Technical Committee and the entry, descent, and landing (EDL) community. Only one of every 150 AIAA members is selected each year for this distinguished honor.

A member of the Stevens faculty since 2021, Rabinovitch’s work combines an interest in space exploration with fundamental computational fluid dynamics research. Funding for Rabinovitch-led projects total in excess of $3 million.

Prior to joining Stevens, Rabinovitch made significant contributions to space exploration at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), including flight hardware and plume-surface interaction analysis for the Mars Perseverance rover; dust mobilization analysis and wind tunnel testing for the Mars helicopter Ingenuity; and lander designs and landing site analysis for the Venus Exploration and Analysis Group steering committee.

Rabinovitch will be formerly inducted at a ceremony to be held in Orlando, Florida, on January 10, 2024.

Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering Jason Rabinovitch has been selected as one of six scientists to serve on the newly established Venus Science Coordination group (VeSCoor).

A joint committee of both the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the European Space Agency (ESA), the five-year coordination group will identify and recommend novel scientific approaches and investigations that might occur over the course of multiple future missions to Venus.

The three missions in development — VERITAS, DAVINCI, and EnVision — will investigate the topography, geology, atmosphere, climate, activity and history of the planet. These missions are scheduled to launch between 2029 and 2032.

An expert in aeronautics and fluid mechanics, Rabinovitch served as a mechanical engineer and faculty fellow at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where he contributed to recent missions to Mars and to future exploration of Saturn’s moon Enceladus.

Associate professor of mechanical engineering Nick Parziale has been awarded a four-year, $952,915 grant through the Office of Naval Research (ONR) to study “Turbulence Quantities in Supersonic and Hypersonic Flows.”

The ONR grant focuses on the chaos of the turbulent boundary layer, the 0.040-inch flow of gas near a high-speed vehicle. Parziale and his team will be making high-quality measurements of the turbulence in air flows surrounding vehicles traveling at supersonic and hypersonic speeds, using a hollow-cylinder flare and a flat plate in the ONR-funded, 60-foot hypersonic Mach 6 shock tunnel that they designed several years ago. These simple objects will be measured at various angles and at various speeds as the team measures pressure, heat transfer, friction drag and current velocity. This data will serve as a comprehensive reference for high-speed turbulence computations.

Two Ph.D. students will participate as research assistants, and undergraduate students will be invited to participate through the department’s summer undergraduate research fellowship, the Stevens Pinnacle Scholars program and the National Science Foundation Research Experiences for Undergraduates program.

Professor Eui-Hyeok Yang was recently named 2023-2025 Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Sensors Council based on his academic reputation, expertise and insights into the future of sensor technology.

Yang’s experience with the organization includes serving as an editor of the IEEE Sensors Journal, as well as on professional committees and as chair of several professional events. For his technical contributions, he was awarded the Lew Allen Award for Excellence at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 2003 and the IEEE Technical Achievement Award (Advanced Career) from the IEEE Sensors Council in 2020. Yang is a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors and a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

A prolific researcher who has brought $10 million in grant funding to Stevens, Yang has authored seven book chapters, published more than 100 research articles and given more than 150 conference presentations and 100 keynote and invited conference/workshop and seminar presentations.

Yang’s research focuses on advanced quantum materials and sensing, which find critical applications in nanoscale sensors, spintronic memories and spin photovoltaics.