Wesley L. Harris will be the keynote speaker for the 30^th Annual Black History Month Celebration at the University of Tennessee Space Institute (UTSI). The celebration and reception will be held at 10 a.m. CST on Friday, April 25, on the UTSI campus in Tullahoma, Tennessee. The event is open to the public.  The event was originally scheduled for Friday, February 21 but was rescheduled due to inclement weather.

 Harris is the Charles Stark Draper Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics, director of the Hypersonics Research Laboratory, and head of New House Residence Hall at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). During his tenure at MIT, he has also served as department head of aeronautics and astronautics and associate provost for faculty equity.

Over the years, Harris has held several prestigious positions in the aeronautics field, including serving as associate administrator for aeronautics at NASA where he was responsible for all programs, facilities, and personnel in aeronautics. Harris also served as vice president and chief administrative officer of UTSI from 1990–1993.

In academia, Harris worked with industry and government agencies to design and build joint industry, government, and university research, and develop programs, centers, and institutes. His academic research is associated with unsteady aerodynamics, aeroacoustics, rarefied gasdynamics, hypersonics, sustainment of capital assets, and chaos in sickle cell disease, making seminal contributions in each of these research fields.