Hassan Aref

Who is Hassan Aref?

Hassan Aref was the Reynolds Metals Professor in the Department of Engineering Science and Mechanics at Virginia Tech, and the Niels Bohr Visiting Professor at the Technical University of Denmark. Prior to joining Virginia Tech as Dean of Engineering in 2003-2005 Aref was Head of the Department of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for a decade from 1992-2003. Before that he was on the faculty of University of California, San Diego, split between the Department of Applied Mechanics and Engineering Science and the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics 1985-1992. Simultaneously, he was Chief Scientist at the San Diego Supercomputer Center for three years 1989-1992. Aref started his faculty career in the Division of Engineering at Brown University 1980-85. He was educated at the University of Copenhagen Niels Bohr Institute, graduating in 1975 with a cand. scient degree in Physics and Mathematics. Subsequently he received the PhD degree in Physics from Cornell University in 1980.

Aref is particularly well known for having developed the concept of chaotic advection in fluid mechanics.