Mark D. Brandyberry
Dr. Mark D. Brandyberry is Chief Operating Officer of IllinoisRocstar. His technical strengths include modeling supersonic and hypersonic flows surrounding air vehicles, modeling internal rocket ballistics, software engineering, verification and validation, uncertainty quantification, statistical analysis, risk assessment and engineering analysis of complex systems, as well as business planning and accounting. In addition to his roles in IllinoisRocstar, he is a Senior Research Scientist at the University of Illinois Center for Simulation of Advanced Rockets and Midwest Structural Sciences Center, and a part-time faculty member in the Computer Science and Information Technology Department at Parkland College in Champaign. He received his Ph.D. in Engineering from UCLA in 1989, and an M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Illinois in 2006. After his Ph.D. in 1989, he joined the Department of Energy Savannah River Laboratory, where he performed risk, safety, and environmental analyses for high-risk nuclear facilities. In 1993, he joined Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) as a senior project lead and task manager for various risk assessment, engineering analysis, and software development projects. In 2001, he came to the University of Illinois, leading efforts in software verification, validation, software engineering, and uncertainty quantifica-tion, simulation grid generation, and large-scale simulation production. He has been lead author on, and co-authored several large multi-volume risk assessments, and over 40 journal and conference papers and reports. He is currently a member of AIAA.
Honors and Awards
G.W. Westinghouse Signature Award of Excellence given to Savannah River Lab K-reactor Risk Assessment Group, 1989: For important analyses and risk insights supporting the program for restarting the Savannah River K-reactor.
Three Relevant Publications
- Brandyberry, M. D., "Thermal Problem Solution Using a Surrogate Model Clustering Technique," Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering, Vol. 197(29-32), pp. 2390-2407, 2008.
- Brandyberry, M. D., Uncertainty Quantification in 3D Rocket Simulation, 41st AIAA/ASME/SAE/ASEE Joint Propulsion Conference and Exhibit, AIAA-2006-4586, July 10-13, 2006
- Brandyberry, M. D. and G.E. Apostolakis, "Response Surface Approximation of a Fire Risk Analysis Computer Code," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, 29, 153-184, 1990.
William A. Dick
Mr. William A. Dick is Chief Executive Officer of IllinoisRocstar. His technical expertise lies in the area of materials science and mechanical testing, and in the organization, establishment, and execution of large multidisciplinary scientific and engineering research programs. He specializes in strategic planning for technical organizations and business development. Dick serves as Executive Director of the Computational Science and Engineering Program and the DOE Center for Simulation of Advanced Rockets at the University of Illinois. He is also Principal Investigator and Executive Director of the Air Force Research Laboratory Midwest Structural Sciences Center. Mr. Dick received his Bachelors in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Delaware (UD) in 1979 and an MBA with Excellence from the University of Illinois in 1992. From 1979 to 1987 he was a Composites Engineer and Deputy Director of the UD NSF Center for Composite Materials Manufacturing and Science. He moved to UI in 1987 as Assistant Dean of Engineering for External Af-fairs/Research and was a key organizer of CSAR, becoming its founding Managing Director in 1997. Mr. Dick is a principal in Pi-D 2020, a small business partnership focusing on university-government research associations, and is a member of ASEE, AIAA, and AAAS. He has authored or co-authored more than 30 technical papers in the areas of simulation science, composite materials, and university-government-industry research partnerships.
Honors and Awards
- Silver Beaver Award for Outstanding Service, Boy Scouts of America, 2004
- Chancellor’s Academic Professional Excellence Award, 1997
- UI Executive MBA Fellowship, 1991-92
Three Relevant Publications
- Dick, W. A., R. A. Fiedler, and M. T. Heath, “Building Rocstar: Simulation Science for Solid Propellant Rocket Motors,” Proceedings of the AIAA Joint Propulsion Conference, AIAA2006-4590, July 2006.
- Dick, W. A., “University-Industry-Government Partnerships in Solid Propellant Rocket Research,” Proceedings of the Japan Society for Aeronautical and Space Sciences, 25th International Symposium on Space Technology and Science, ISTS 2006-a-29, June 2006.
- Heath, M. T. and W. A. Dick, “Virtual Prototyping of Solid Propellant Rockets,” IEEE Computing in Science and Engineering, IEEE Computer Society, March-April 2000, pp. 21-32.
Thomas L. Jackson
Dr. Thomas L. Jackson is Chief Scientist of IllinoisRocstar. His expertise is in the area of basic fluid mechanics, combustion, and the large-scale simulation thereof, and in stability. In addition to his senior position in IllinoisRocstar, he serves as a Senior Research Scientist at the Center for Simulation of Advanced Rockets (CSAR), a Computational Science and Engineering Affiliate (CSE), and an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering (AE), all at the University of Illinois. He received his Mathematics Ph.D. from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1985 after which he joined the staff of the Institute for Computer Applications in Science and Engineering (ICASE) where he had previously been a Graduate Research Assistant. In 1987 he became an Assistant, then (in 1992) an Associate, Professor at Old Dominion University in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics. In 1993 he moved back to ICASE for five years before moving to the University of Illinois, where he now works. He has co-edited two books, co-authored a textbook on hydrodynamic stability, and authored or co-authored more than 140 papers. He is currently a member of the Combustion Institute, and an Associate Fellow of AIAA. He has been a paper and grant referee for many organizations and journals, and is currently an Associate Editor for AIAA Journal.
Honors and Awards
- NASA Group Achievement Award to ICASE Fluid Mechanics Group, 1994: For development of important insights into basic fluid mechanical phenomena and theoretical analysis tools which have contributed to major advances in flow prediction and control including laminar flow control.
- Associate Fellow, AIAA 2006
- Associate Editor, AIAA Journal
Three Relevant Publications
- Grosch, C.E., J.M. Seiner, M.Y. Hussaini and T.L. Jackson. “Numerical simulation of mixing enhancement in a hot supersonic jet”, Phys. Fluids, Vol. 9(4), pp. 1125-1143, 1997.
- Criminale, W.O., D.G. Lasseigne and T.L. Jackson. “Vortex perturbation dynamics”, Studies in Appl. Math., Vol. 98, pp. 99-120, 1997.
- Jackson, T.L., and J. Buckmaster. “Heterogeneous propellant combustion”, AIAA Journal, Vol. 40(6), pp. 1122-1130, 2002.
Fady Michael Najjar
Dr. Fady M. Najjar is a Chief Technical Officer of IllinoisRocstar. He co-designed and developed the multiphysics software framework for advanced computational fluid dynamics flow simulations for solid propellant rocket motors and has performed leading-edge benchmark efforts on DOE ASC platforms with thousands of processors (CRAY/SGI Origin 2000, CRAY T3E, IBM SP-3 and IBM SP-4, as well as Linux clusters), achieving high scalability on the largest computer clusters in our nation. Najjar was formerly Senior Research Scientist at the Center for Simulation of Advanced Rockets, a Computational Science and Engineering Affiliate, and an Adjunct Lecturer in the Department of Aerospace Engineering, all at the University of Illinois. He received his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering in 1994, an M.S. in Mechanical Engineering in 1990, both from UI, and a B.E. in Mechanical Engineering from the American University of Beirut in 1987. He was an NSF post-doctoral fellow at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) from 1994 till 1996, and then joined NCSA as a systems engineer supporting the high-performance computing community. In 1998, he joined CSAR as a research scientist. Najjar is a Senior Member of AIAA, a Member of APS and ASME. He has over 25 peer-reviewed articles and more than 30 conference proceedings.
Honors and Awards
- Extraction and Processing Technology Award 1998: The Mineral, Metals & Materials Society.
- Jerry Silver Award, The Iron and Steel Society, 1991: To recognize excellence in research at a Master’s level in the field of iron and steel.
Three Relevant Publications
- Najjar, F.M., and D.K. Tafti (1996) Study of Discrete Test Filters and Numerical Approximations for the Dynamic Subgrid-Scale Stress Model in Turbulent Channel Flow Simulations, Physics of Fluids, Vol. 8(4), pp. 1076-1088.
- Najjar, F.M., J.P. Ferry, A. Haselbacher, and S. Balachandar (2006) Simulations of Solid-Propellant Rockets: Effects of Aluminum Droplet Size Distribution, J. Spacecraft and Rockets, Vol. 43 (6), pp 1258-1270.
- Dong, H., R. Mittal, and F. Najjar (2006) Hydrodynamic Performance and Wake Topology of Finite Aspect Ratio Flapping Foils, J. Fluid Mechanics. Vol. 566, pp. 309-343.