Dr. Paul Dimotakis is the John K. Northrop Professor of Aeronautics and professor of applied physics at the California Institute of Technology. He earned his bachelor's in physics, his master's in nuclear engineering and his doctorate in applied physics from Caltech. Following his Ph.D., he was invited to stay on as a member of the Caltech faculty, moving up the ranks to the endowed chair in 1995.
His research has focused on superfluidity, turbulent flow phenomena, combustion, hypersonic flow and propulsion, laser diagnostics, high-speed image data acquisition and computational adaptive optics. His space-related activities began while an undergraduate at Caltech, under former JPL Director Dr. Edward Stone, with work on the Orbital Geophysical Observatory-C satellite in the 1960s. He has also worked on the space shuttle, Mars Pathfinder, the Spitzer Space Telescope and the analysis of the shuttle Columbia failure.
He has consulted for aerospace companies, Disney and Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, and assisted in sail design for the successful America3 campaign to defend the 1992 Americas Cup. Dimotakis has received a Caltech teaching award and has served as an associate editor for the Journal of Fluid Mechanics. He is also a fellow of the American Physical Society, an associate fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and is an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He has served on National Academy of Science study panels, panels for the Department of Energy, and has participated in and led several studies for the Department of Defense.
Aerial View of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory
