Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering Professor Marilyn J. Smith has been chosen to deliver the Royal Aeronautical Society's (RAeS) 2023 Lanchester Lecture. She is the 61^st recipient of the honor and the first from Georgia Tech. Smith’s selection underscores her significant contributions to advancing aviation and aeronautical engineering.

“It has been a great honor to be nominated by colleagues in the United Kingdom for this lectureship,” said Smith, who will give the lecture in London on October 17.

According to RAeS, “The lecture was established to honor Frederick William Lanchester, Great Britain’s first great aerodynamicist whose work on stability was fundamental to aviation; he also formulated the first comprehensive theory of lift and drag.”

Smith’s lecture, Advances in Unsteady Computational Aerodynamics with Separation, will discuss the predictive capabilities attained in the last 20 years for unsteady aerodynamics that involve dynamic interactions with separated flows.

“Accurate prediction of separated flows, with or without reattachment, remains one of the areas of active research after decades of computational progress. Separation is a highly complex phenomenon in itself. The ability to computationally predict separation accurately and consistently across different configurations and applications requires that meshes, time steps, turbulence closures, and transition models all have sufficient fidelity to ensure that no one area compromises the physics,” explained Smith, who earned her bachelor’s, master’s and Ph.D. degrees in aerospace engineering from Georgia Tech.

The lecture will also allow Smith to share technical accomplishments, best practices, current trends, and insights for the future.

Last summer, she received the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Aerodynamics Awards (AIAA) for her contributions to the computational and theoretical aerodynamics analysis of static and dynamic systems with separated flows, particularly for vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) rotorcraft vehicles according to the citation.

Smith has been at the forefront of aerodynamics research and development throughout her career. As the director of the Nonlinear Computational Aeroelasticity Lab, she leads an internationally recognized and award-winning research team in the areas of unsteady aerodynamics and computational aeroelasticity using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) across rotary-wing, fixed-wing, and launch vehicles, as well as sustainable energy.

The Triple Jacket also serves as the director of the Vertical Lift Research Center of Excellence (VLRCOE), where she leads a team of nine university experts on sponsored research projects for the U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, and NASA.

Last year, she was selected to give the 42^nd Nikolsky Lecture, an honor awarded to individuals with a highly distinguished career in vertical flight aircraft research. She is the author or co-author of more than 200 technical publications, and her research products are in active use by the U.S. Government and other organizations, including the Drone Racing League.

She is active internationally on three NATO AVT Panels investigating nonlinear gusts behaviors on UAVs and collaboration of experimental/computational aerodynamics. Smith serves on the Board of Directors of the Vertical Flight Society (VFS) and is a technical director emeritus for the VFS.