Mark Drela

Mark Drela, born July 1, 1959, has established himself as one of the world's foremost aeronautical engineers since joining MIT's faculty in 1986, where he now serves as the Terry J. Kohler Professor of Fluid Dynamics. His remarkable career began at MIT, where he earned his S.B., S.M., and Ph.D. in Aeronautics and Astronautics, driven by a passion for aviation that started in his native Poland building model airplanes at age five. His groundbreaking contributions include developing widely-used computational tools like XFOIL, Athena Vortex Lattice (AVL), and MISES, which revolutionized aerodynamic design by making it faster and more accessible. His expertise has shaped numerous significant projects, from the record-setting Daedalus human-powered aircraft that flew 72.4 miles from Crete to Santorini in 1988, to designing aircraft for Boeing and the wing for the Predator UAV. In 1991, he set another world record with Decavitator, a human-powered hydrofoil reaching 18.5 knots on Boston's Charles River. Elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2009 and named a Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Drela is equally renowned for his teaching excellence, maintaining 24/7 availability to students while delivering lectures filled with original insights. His research continues to advance computational algorithms for predicting 2D and 3D external flows about aerodynamic bodies, spanning subsonic, transonic, and supersonic flow regimes