Matthew J. Zahr, assistant professor of aerospace and mechanical engineering, has received a Young Investigator Research Program (YIP) award from the Office of Naval Research.
The ONR YIP is one of the nation’s most selective research early-career awards in science and technology. It recognizes young faculty who show outstanding promise for significant scientific breakthroughs.
Zahr develops mathematical models, numerical methods, and software for the analysis of physics problems that arise in a range of applications in science, engineering, and medicine.
His Navy YIP research project focuses on enhancing understanding of hypersonic flow, which is crucial to the design and control of vehicles that operate at extremely high speeds. He aims to develop novel simulation technology, based on automated alignment of the computational grid with shock waves and boundary layers, that will lead to new insight into hypersonic flow.
Zahr received his Ph.D. in computational and mathematical engineering from Stanford University in 2016. He served as a postdoctoral fellow at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory until he joined the Notre Dame faculty in 2018. In 2020 he received a Young Investigator Award from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.
— College of Engineering