Young Professional Profile May 2018

Name: Nick Parziale  

Hometown: Huntington, New York

Currently lives: Weehawken, New Jersey

Education:

• Ph.D. California Institute of Technology (2013)
• Dissertation: Slender-Body Hypervelocity Boundary-Layer Instability
• M.S. California Institute of Technology (2009)
• B.S.M.E. SUNY Binghamton (w/ honors 2008)  

Employer: Stevens Institute of Technology

Job Description: Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering

As a kid, what did you want to be when you “grew up”?
Doc Brown from “Back to the Future”

How far can YOU see? Where do you see the aerospace industry 10–20 years from now?
If you read through the literature, it seems as if hypersonic flight has been five years away for decades. I think we are just now beginning to get away from trying to solve issues associated with high-speed flight by brute force (i.e., use of engineering correlations to design vehicles). That is, as a community, we are treating the wicked problems of high-speed flight as basic and scientific. This approach, coupled with rapid advances in electronics and imaging technology, yields a more tractable path to the design of hypersonic vehicles over the next decade or so.

One insightful fact you want everyone to know:
Sometimes it is what it is.

Professional Interests:
Fundamental fluid-mechanics problems in supersonic and hypersonic flight. Development of optical diagnostics to investigate these problems.

Hobbies:
Running. Avid fan of the Yankees, Giants, and (unfortunately) Knicks.