Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Writer: Shanna Relford
news@utsi.edu
Professor Werner J.A. Dahm, a 1981 graduate of the University of
Tennessee Space Institute, has been named the Chief Scientist of the
U.S. Air Force. Currently a Professor of Aerospace Engineering at
the University of Michigan, he will take a leave of absence from
this position to assume his new post at the Pentagon on October 1.
“The Air Force today must rely more than ever on leading-edge
technologies to accomplish its mission. My role is to help the Air
Force get the most out of its science and technology investments,”
Dr. Dahm said recently. Once a research engineer at Arnold
Engineering Development Center in Tullahoma, we may see Dr. Dahm at
AEDC again as he will be visiting Air Force sites across the country
and around the world in his new capacity as AF Chief Scientist. “The
view of science and technology that one gets in this position is
absolutely amazing,” Dahm said.
Dahm is already a member of the Air Force Scientific Advisory
Board’s Executive Committee, working with Air Force Research
Laboratory (AFRL), university research communities and industry
across the nation to address issues relevant to the Air Force. As
Chief Scientist, Dr. Dahm will be the principal science and
technology advisor to the Secretary of the Air Force and the Air
Force Chief of Staff. The AF Chief Scientist is also a member of the
Air Staff and, as such, will provide assessments to Air Force
leadership on a wide range of scientific and technical issues that
affect the Air Force mission.
Dr. Dahm has 30 years of experience in science and technology,
including defense science. As a research engineer at AEDC, Dr. Dahm
worked in the Transonic Wind Tunnel Section of the Propulsion Wind
Tunnel Facility focusing on adaptive wall transonic wind tunnels and
high-incidence missile aerodynamics. “As a graduate student at UTSI
working on my MS degree, I had the opportunity to work as a Research
Engineer in the PWT/4T Analysis Branch,” Dr. Dahm explained. “I
joined as a full-time employee of ARO, the operating contractor at
the time, and later Calspan when they took over the operating
contract. AEDC is one of the best places that a young aerospace
engineer can work, and being a student at UTSI made that possible.”
Dr. Dahm recalled, “Most of my work dealt with high-incidence
missile aerodynamics - especially the AMRAAM missile, where we were
providing analytical support to wind tunnel tests and computational
simulations - and with adaptive wall wind tunnel development, where
we were developing instrumentation techniques for control surface
measurements. I also got to supervise a series of tests of this
instrumentation in the 1-foot supersonic tunnel, and was involved in
tests in the 4T tunnel as well. In all of these projects, it was
great to bring together the analytical work we were doing with the
"real-world" environment of wind tunnel testing and data analysis.”
Dr. Dahm has fond memories of the three years (1979 to 1981) he
spent at UTSI and AEDC. “It was a fantastic experience for a young
engineer, and UTSI played an important role in my career. I left in
1981 to go to Caltech to get my PhD in aeronautics, but the
experience I gained at UTSI and AEDC has always stayed with me, and
gave me a perspective that few in the academic research community
have.”
“Since then I have worked on fundamental research problems that have
the potential to impact a wide range of applications in a big way,
but I have always sought to ensure that we were working on things
that would be relevant to "real-world" problems,” said Dahm.
For the past three years, Dr. Dahm has served on the Air Force
Scientific Advisory Board (SAB), chairing two major studies on
spectrum management and thermal management and participated in two
additional SAB studies. He has also chaired SAB reviews of AFRL
propulsion and air vehicles research and development. Most recently,
he served on the SAB review of the Air Force Office of Scientific
Research. He has also been involved in four studies for the Defense
Science Board (DSB), and is a member of the Defense Science Study
Group (DSSG).
Dr. Dahm studied Mechanical Engineering at the UT Space Institute,
earning his master’s degree in 1981. His roots also extend to
Huntsville, AL, where he grew up the son of Werner K. Dahm, one of
the original German rocket scientists who helped to build NASA. Dr.
Dahm earned his bachelor’s degree at the University of Alabama in
Huntsville, and later pursued his doctoral degree from Caltech,
receiving his PhD in 1985, the same year he went to work for the
University of Michigan. Dr. Dahm has remained with the University of
Michigan for the past 23 years, researching and teaching fluid
dynamics, aerodynamics and propulsion. Currently, Dr. Dahm is the
Head of that university’s Laboratory for Turbulence and Combustion.
The author of over 180 technical publications, Dr. Dahm has given
more than 220 technical presentations in locations all around the
world, including over 100 invited and plenary lectures. Dr. Dahm has
been named a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) and of
the American Institute of Aeronautics & Astronautics (AIAA), where
he has also served as Associate Editor. He has been a recipient of
Caltech’s William F. Ballhaus Aeronautics Prize and has been honored
at the University of Michigan with the 1938E Distinguished
Achievement Award and the George J. Huebner Research Excellence
Award.
