Spectrum - Volume 18 Issue 25 March 28, 1996 - Brown named associate provost for RGS

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Brown named associate provost for RGS

By Susan Trulove

Spectrum Volume 18 Issue 25 - March 28, 1996

Eugene F. Brown, professor of mechanical engineering and assistant department head for graduate programs and research, has been named associate provost for program development in Research and Graduate Studies (RGS) at Virginia Tech, according to Len Peters, vice provost for research and dean of the Graduate School.

The half-time position is effective May 16. Brown will retain his faculty position in mechanical engineering.

As associate provost for program development, Brown will head the RGS program-development group, which will include research opportunities and graduate-student recruitment.

"Dr. Brown has had considerable research support with a strong record of scholarly publications, and has been a leader within his college in recruitment of outstanding graduate students for their programs," Peters said.

"We look forward to Dr. Brown's leadership. He has shared his ideas with us in the past and we expect he will bring a lot of energy to the new position."

Brown has been at Virginia Tech since 1969. He has taught a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses in thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, instrumentation, gas dynamics, turbo machinery, and aircraft and missile propulsion.

His research interests include the general area of computational fluid dynamics. At the Naval Weapons Center (1987) and the Naval Research Laboratory (1988-93) his research has involved computational studies of the mixing behavior of elliptical jets. More recently he has been involved in water mist/flame interaction studies in support of the Halon replacement program of the Center for Fire Safety and Survivability of the Naval Research Laboratory.

Brown has spent his summers performing propulsion-related research at a number of government laboratories and private organizations including the Douglas Aircraft Company, the Boeing Company, NASA-Langley, the Air Force Aero Propulsion Laboratory, the Air Force Weapons Laboratory, the Naval Weapons Center, and the Naval Research Laboratory.

In 1978-79 he was the Heineman Foundation visiting professor at the von Karman Institute and from 1985-87 he was employed by the Office of Naval Research as the liaison scientist for fluid mechanics for Europe and the Middle East at ONR's European Office in London, England.

Brown is an associate fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and a member of the American Institute of Mechanical Engineers, American Society for Engineering Education, American Association for the Advancement of Science and several other professional and honorary organizations. He has served as a consultant to numerous industrial and government clients and is a member of several national scientific and technical committees. He has published more than 100 papers, articles, and reports describing his research.

He received his undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Wisconsin and his graduate degrees from the University of Illinois. In 1968, after receiving his Ph.D., he attended the von Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics in Rhode-St-Genèse, Belgium, from which he received a diploma in 1969.

In the near future, Research and Graduate Studies will also fill a position for a half-time associate provost for interdisciplinary programs. The new positions are a result of the reassignment of the position held by Ernest Stout, associate provost for research, who retires July 1.

"RGS has shifted its human resources in order to meet the priorities identified by the TQM teams last year," Peters said.