CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Hassan Aref, professor and head of the department of theoretical and applied mechanics at the University of Illinois, has been selected as the 2000 recipient of the Otto Laporte Award from the American Physical Society.
The award, which recognizes Aref for “pioneering contributions to the study of chaotic motion in fluids, scientific computation, and vortex dynamics, and most notably for the development of the concept of chaotic advection,” will be presented Nov. 20 at the APS Division of Fluid Dynamics meeting in Washington, D.C.
Aref earned his first degree, in physics and mathematics, from the University of Copenhagen in 1975, and his doctorate in physics from Cornell University in 1980. He was a professor at Brown University in its division of engineering from 1980 to 1985 and was a professor of fluid mechanics at the University of California at San Diego from 1985 to 1992. Aref also was the chief scientist at the San Diego Supercomputer Center from 1989 to 1992. He joined the UI faculty in 1992.
Aref’s main field of research is fluid mechanics. He is particularly well known for introducing and naming the mechanism of “chaotic advection.” He also is well known for his work on point vortex dynamics, and for numerical simulation studies of vortex flows, flows with sharp interfaces, and foam structure and evolution.
Aref has won numerous awards, including the Presidential Young Investigator Award from the National Science Foundation. He was named a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 1989.
Founded in 1899, the APS has more than 40,000 members worldwide.
