Robert W. Pitz, professor of mechanical engineering, has been named a fellow of The Combustion Institute, an international educational and scientific society. He will attend the 38th International Symposium on Combustion in July 2020 in Adelaide, Australia, where he will be recognized along with 36 other fellow honorees from around the world.
The institute has recognized Pitz for excellence in developing laser diagnostics to study turbulence-chemistry interactions in turbulent flames and preferential-diffusion effects in tubular flames. Fellows are active participants in The Combustion Institute, which directs the publication of two scientific journals, the monthly Combustion and Flame and the biennial Proceedings of The Combustion Institute.
Pitz’s combustion research and laser diagnostics relates to energy for heating, energy production and propulsion. He has published more than 190 articles in laser diagnostics, laminar and turbulent combustion, turbulence-chemistry interactions, oxygen-enriched combustion, Raman scattering, laser-induced fluorescence and molecular-tagging velocimetry.
In 1987, he received the National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator Award for his research. He received the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics’ Best Paper Award in Propellants and Combustion in 1996. He is a past chair of the AIAA Propellants and Combustion Technical Committee.
Pitz is a fellow of the AIAA and of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. He is a registered professional engineer in the state of Tennessee.
Before joining the mechanical engineering faculty at Vanderbilt in 1986, he spent five years as a research engineer at the General Electric Research Development Center in Schenectady, New York.
Pitz served as chair of the mechanical engineering department from 1998 to 2017, and director of graduate studies from 1991 to 1998.
Contact: Brenda Ellis, (615) 343-6314
brenda.ellis@vanderbilt.edu