University of Southern California

At the University of Southern California, the Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering (AME) Department's faculty has adopted three major Strategic Themes to help guide the directions and enrich the contents of our education and research programs, at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. They are: Exploration Technologies, The Art, Science and Technology of the Design and Manufacturing , and Aerospace/Mechanical Technologies for Improving the Quality of Urban Life. The Strategic Themes have been formulated to address the future and are also influenced by U.S.C's location at the center of a technologically sophisticated, intensely urban area. Disciplinary and multidisciplinary Faculty Research Interest Clusters within AME provide research support for the Themes. The multifaceted influence of the Strategic Themes on our undergraduate and graduate programs in education and research is exhibited throughout this web site.

In addition, the Department actively supports three design/build student projects that include volunteers from all undergraduate years, along with graduate student and faculty mentors. These projects are: a competition airplane, competition cars, and a micro-satellite flying test bed for our own and other technologies. Also, a yearlong senior projects laboratory course facilitates access to our faculty's research for interested serious undergraduate scholars. Undergraduate Merit Research scholars from all years have an opportunity to participate in the AME faculty's research through a program supported by the School of Engineering.

Biographies:
Paul D. Ronney is a Professor in the Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, CA. Prof. Ronney received a Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, a Master of Science degree in Aeronautics from the California Institute of Technology, and a Doctor of Science degree in Aeronautics and Astronautics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He held postdoctoral appointments at the NASA-Lewis Research Center and the Laboratory for Computational Physics at the U. S. Naval Research Laboratory and a position as Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Princeton University before assuming his current position at USC. Prof. Ronney was the Payload Specialist Astronaut (Alternate) for Space Shuttle mission MSL-1 (STS-83, April 4 - 8, 1997) and the reflight of this mission (STS-94, July 1 - 16, 1997). Prof. Ronney has published over 60 technical papers in peer-reviewed journals, made over 150 technical presentations (including over 20 invited presentations at international conferences) and holds two U.S. patents with several pending. In recognition of his achievements, he is a fellow of the Institute of Physics , a recipient of the National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator Award and the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (U.K.) Starley Premium Award for a paper on a new control concept for internal combustion engines that promises to provide higher thermal efficiency and lower pollutant emissions.
Fokion N. Egolfopoulos is a Professor of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering at USC. Prof. Egolfopoulos is well known for his studies on the aerodynamic and kinetics processes in flames, high-speed air-breathing propulsion, microgravity combustion, and heterogeneous reacting flows. He is the recipient of the Silver Medal of Combustion in 1990 for his work on flame dynamics. He is currently Deputy Editor of Combustion and Flame, the leading combustion journal. He has authored and co-authored over 50 archival publications.