Stewart Named Shao Lee Soo Professor

MechSE Professor D. Scott Stewart was invested as the Shao Lee Soo Professor in Mechanical Science and Engineering. Professor Stewart has made significant contributions to theoretical and computational combustion science and detonation theory that have provided answers to fundamental questions in stability theory and detonation front dynamics. His practical and computational modeling contributions to explosives engineering have resulted in theoretical advances that allow scientists to predict and assess the safety, reliability, and performance of high-density explosives more accurately. His seminal findings have appeared in such prestigious publications as Physics of Fluids, the Journal of Computational Physics, and the Journal of Fluid Mechanics.

Stewart received a B.S. degree in engineering science from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1976, and a Ph.D. degree in theoretical and applied science from Cornell University in 1981. That same year, he joined the University of Illinois as an assistant professor, rising through the ranks to become a Professor of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics in 1993. He joined the Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering in 2005. As a founding principal investigator, he proposed the Center for Simulation of Advanced Rockets, served as its first Technical Coordinator for Integrated Systems Simulation, and as its first Combustion and Energetic Materials Team Leader. He has been a collaborator with Los Alamos National Laboratory for more than 25 years and has been funded continuously by the Air Force Research Laboratory for more than 17 years. He is the current Director of the Technical Program for the Florida Institute for Research in Energetics, a large university consortium focused on energetic materials.

A Fellow of both American Physical Society's Division of Fluid Dynamics and the Institute of Physics, as well as an Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Stewart is a founding member of the journal Combustion Theory and Modeling, and a member of its editorial board. He received the National Academy Fellow Senior Research Award for 2007-2008, and has received both the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Engineering Council Award in Advising (2006) and the College of Engineering Outstanding Advisor Award (1999).

The Shao Lee Soo Professorship was established by Hermia Gungtai Dan-Soo in the name of her late husband, Shao Lee Soo, whose pioneering work on multiphase systems and contributions to thermodynamics, direct energy conversion, combustion and plasma physics brought Illinois recognition and status within higher education and engineering.