skip to main content
Bhuvana Srinivasan

Bhuvana Srinivasan

Award

2019 NSF CAREER Award Winner

Department

Kevin T. Crofton Department of Aerospace and Ocean Engineering

Awarded Project

Continuum Kinetic Studies of Hydrodynamic and Magneto Hydrodynamic Instabilities

What path did you take to get to this point in your career and research?

I received my B.S. degrees in aerospace and mechanical engineering at the Illinois Institute of Technology followed by M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in aeronautics and astronautics at the University of Washington. As an undergraduate student, I was an experimental researcher working in a fluid dynamics laboratory while also working in industry doing computational modeling. For graduate school, I decided to focus on theory and simulation pertaining to plasma physics due to my fascination for plasma-based spacecraft propulsion and nuclear fusion for terrestrial and space power.

Following my Ph.D., I did not have an immediate desire to go into academia because I wanted to work in a highly research-intensive environment with some of the brightest minds in my field, and with access to some of the largest resources in the world. Hence, I worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory for four years and I am extremely grateful for having had that valuable experience prior to joining Virginia Tech.

What impact do you hope your research will have?

My NSF-funded project is in high-energy-density astrophysical plasmas such as those in exploding stars. This work will use first-principles, high-dimensional, kinetic calculations to address existing discrepancies between numerical simulations and real-world measurements in high-energy-density plasmas. For decades, simulations of astrophysical and laboratory plasmas have relied on simplified fluid models, which have fallen short of accurately capturing physics effects such as those pertaining to transport of mass, momentum, and energy. 

The impact of this work extends beyond astrophysics to terrestrial applications of plasmas such as nuclear fusion, which has the potential to provide an abundance of clean energy. In addition to furthering our basic understanding of plasma physics and transport processes in a plasma, the novel numerical tools that will be developed as part of this study will be broadly applicable to fundamental science, and to national security, energy, and spacecraft engineering.

What do you find most interesting about your field of engineering?

I find aerospace engineering to be a fascinating and diverse field. Within this field, there are researchers who study highly applied engineering aspects as well as highly fundamental scientific aspects. While I more solidly fit in the latter, I am motivated by the long-term prospects of the former. The abundance of research opportunities to satisfy our desire for exploration and discovery makes this a fulfilling field for me.

If you had one piece of advice to give students that aspire to pursue research and are just starting their journey, what would you share with them?

For me, the most fascinating and interesting research areas are the ones that may appear to be "impossible" to the majority.  Do not let the challenges and the highly ambitious nature of many research areas discourage you from pursuing them. The critical and creative thinking that is necessary to pursue research, and the uncertainty of what you may find, keeps research really interesting and exciting despite the challenges. Also, it is never too early to start getting involved in research.