Prize Recipient


Recipient Picture

Shabnam Raayai Ardakani
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Citation:

"For experimental and theoretical contributions to understanding the mechanisms by which microtextured riblet surfaces can reduce (or increase) the viscous frictional drag experienced in high Reynolds number laminar boundary layer flows, and Taylor Couette flows."

Background:

Shabnam Raayai-Ardakani received her B.S in Mechanical Engineering from Sharif University of Technology in 2011. She received her S.M. in Mechanical Engineering from MIT under the supervision of professor Mary Boyce working on mechanics of graded wrinkling. She received her Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from MIT under the supervision of professor Gareth McKinley. In her Ph.D., inspired by the ribs on denticles of shark skin she studied the method of geometry mediated drag reduction using riblet and wrinkled textured surfaces. She is currently a post-doctoral associate at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at MIT where she is working on developing a volume-controlled cavity expansion technique inspired by Cavitation Rheology for probing the mechanical properties of soft, and biological materials. Dr. Raayai-Ardakani has accepted a fellowship at the Rowland Institute at Harvard University and will join the institute in summer 2019 as a principal investigator. She has been a member of the American Physical Society since 2012 and a member of the Society of Engineering Sciences since 2013.


Selection Committee:

2018 Selection Committee Members: Mark Stremler (Chair), Arezoo Ardekani (Vice Chair), Pascale Garaud Carlos Hidrovo, Nick Ouellette, Alain Pumir, Mingjun Wei