Faculty Profile: Melissa Green
Professor Melissa Green began as a new Associate Professor in Aerospace Engineering & Mechanics (AEM) in the Fall of 2021. Green’s research is in the area of fluid dynamics, with primary focus on experiments, though with a significant computational component as well. Green came to Minnesota from Syracuse University in upstate New York, and so had an immediate comfort level with Minnesota winters. Green was also familiar with many AEM faculty and their research, making it that much easier to settle into the department.
Finding the flow
Since arriving at Minnesota, Professor Green has started collaborations with her colleagues in both AEM and St. Anthony Falls Laboratory (SAFL), and is starting to build new experimental apparatus in both locations. Green’s interest is in fluid dynamic applications for aircraft surfaces and underwater swimming, especially how one can develop graceful, yet powerful, maneuverable devices underpinned by high dimensional, nonlinear, unsteady, 3D physics. She notes that the interplay between biomimetic and bio-inspired design is particularly interesting. “Animals are much better at swimming than human-made vehicles. The answer may not just be to make a vehicle that looks/works like a shark or a tuna. What kinds of propulsive devices or control surfaces could we make if inspired by nature, but not constrained by it?”
Green has quickly attracted graduate students to her research group, including first year Ph.D. students Ricardo Cavalcanti Linhares and Raphael Ribeiro. Ribeiro’s project is to study flows in which the wakes of objects like marine or aerodynamic structures or small biological organisms may interact with the surrounding flow field and its inherent turbulence. Green says, “Raphael’s interests are a blend of my previous work (bio-inspired fish-like propulsion) and (AEM Professor) Ellen (Longmire’s) expertise (in experimental turbulence). Linhares is working on a project involving predicting unsteady flows over delta wings at high speeds with sparse pressure sensors. Green adds, “Ricardo is working on a project that I brought with me from Syracuse. What’s great about having it at Minnesota is that Ellen’s expertise in experiments, unsteady flows, and data analysis has been incredibly beneficial to the project.”
Green is also excited about the prospect of expanding her research to take advantage of the excellent facilities at SAFL. She notes that “…many of my research projects have been about individual mechanical or aerospace vehicles or objects. SAFL has facilities and collaborators to explore how those pieces fit together in the bigger whole of the ‘Earth-surface environment.’ In addition to working with my colleagues in AEM, I’m looking forward to growing with my affiliated faculty position with the St. Anthony’s Falls Laboratory.”
