Sirish Namilae named COE Researcher of the Year

*Update, April 29, 2022: Dr. Sirish Namilae has won Embry-Riddle's College of Engineering Researcher of the Year award for the second consecutive year. 

Dr. Sirish Namilae, associate professor of Aerospace Engineering, has been named College of Engineering's Researcher of the Year.

Namilae's research has mainly focused on the areas of composite materials and complex systems, and multiscale modeling, and his work has led to many journal and conference publications. Over the past five years, he has helped generate over $5 million dollars for research funding and has been directly responsible for over $1.8 million of those research funds.

Namilae's background in molecular dynamics and modeling helped him to develop a multiscale model for studying infectious disease propagation in pedestrian networks. The model predicts pedestrian trajectories, which are then analyzed and used for infectious disease surveillance at airports and in airplanes. Additionally, he has also used similar infection spread models to analyze how fuel shortages propagate during hurricane evacuations.

With his experience in composite materials, Namilae's recent work in nanoscale modeling has led to new methods in detecting manufacturing defects and reducing residual stresses.

In another direction, Namilae and his team contributed to the development of material used for damage sensing of aerospace composites, composite repair and space debris detection. Recently, he has also developed a material that mimics the mechanical behavior of human brain tissue, as well as models for microstructural design and optimization of nanocomposites.

Additionally, he is advising 10 students, with two Ph.D. students and eight master's students having graduated from his research group. Most of Namilae’s graduate students have authored multiple journal and conference papers. Namilae plans to use a portion of his grant funding to increase undergraduate student mentoring.