Hong awarded McKnight Land-Grant Professorship

SAFL faculty Jiarong Hong was recently one of eight professors awarded a McKnight Land-Grant Professorship with the University of Minnesota. This two-year position is designed to “advance the careers of the most promising junior faculty members” and includes a stipend to support ongoing research efforts.

When he began work as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Minnesota, Jiarong Hong brought with him a fresh perspective on how to take advantage of the abundant Minnesota winter snow: harnessing it for research breakthroughs. Over the past two years, Hong has used snow as a tracer to track the movement of air around the EOLOS 2.5 MW wind turbine located in Rosemount, Minnesota. His results made waves in the engineering community as he developed a new way of studying wind movement around large objects. It also helped him secure a National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER award to fully explore the implications of this new methodology. 

Congratulations to Dr. Hong! Learn more about his research in using snow to measure the wakes behind wind turbines.