News
Freund Promoted to Full Professor
AE faculty member Jonathan B. Freund has been promoted to the rank of full professor.
Jonathan B. Freund
Jointly appointed in AE and Mechanical Science and Engineering (MechSE), Freund has been at Illinois since 2001, and has emerged as one of the most recognized and talented researchers and leaders in the international fluid mechanics community. His research interests are aerodynamic sound, biomedical fluid mechanics, numerical methods, large-scale parallel computing, the mechanics of nanometer-scale systems.
Early in his career, Freund undertook the first-ever accurate simulations of turbulent jets and their sound fields, and the results are still the benchmark for research in the field. A graphic image from that work was chosen in 2000 for the American Physical Society Division of Fluid Dynamics Gallery of Fluid Motion.
Freund’s current research, funded by NASA, seeks to optimize the actions of actuators for actively suppressing jet noise. In addition, he has led the research efforts of the Fluids and Combustion Division of the Center for Simulation of Advanced Rockets at Illinois.
Freund’s ability to see through the complexity of physical systems and to develop original and plausible models for them has also led to several key health-related discoveries – such as mechanisms for the collateral damage to kidney tissues that occurs during shock-wave lithotripsy, and the transport of red and white blood cells in microvessels. This work was recognized in 2008 when APS’s Fluid Dynamics Division recognized Freund with the Francois Frenkiel Award.
Freund came to Illinois from the University of California-Los Angeles, where he started his career in 1998 after earning his PhD in mechanical engineering from Stanford University. Freund also earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mechanical engineering from Stanford, in 1991 and 1992, respectively.
