Experts

Dr David Birch

Position:
Senior Lecturer in Aerospace Engineering
Facility:
University of Surrey
Areas of Expertise:
Air Quality, Instrumentation, Measurement, Urban Canopy

Dr Birch is the head of the Centre for Aerodynamics & Environmental Flow, Director of Research at Surrey Sensors Ltd and Programme Leader for aerospace engineering. Dr Birch has more than fifteen years of experience in experimental aerodynamics research, specializing in the characterization of highly vortical, unsteady turbulent flows and the development of specialist instrumentation required for this work.

Dr David Soper

Position:
Lecturer in Vehicle Aerodynamics
Facility:
University of Birmingham
Areas of Expertise:
Low Speed

Dr David Soper is a Lecturer in Vehicle Aerodynamics in the School of Engineering and Birmingham Centre for Railway Research and Education. His research interests lie in the field of applied fluid dynamics and engineering applications through vehicle aerodynamics. He has particular expertise in experimental investigations both at model and full scale. He is the facility manager and operator of the University of Birmingham moving model TRansient Aerodynamic INvestigation (TRAIN) rig for vehicle aerodynamic research.

Dr Paul Bruce

Position:
Reader in High Speed Aerodynamics
Facility:
Imperial College London
Areas of Expertise:
Hypersonic

Dr Bruce leads a research group in experimental high speed aerodynamics at Imperial, utilising Imperial’s supersonic and hypersonic wind tunnels. His research focuses on how air interacts with objects travelling at high speed, including understanding the shock waves which form on high speed planes and designing atmospheric re-entry vehicles for future space exploration missions. Dr Bruce joined Imperial in 2011 and currently teaches undergraduate courses in aircraft aerodynamics and aerothermodynamics for re-entry vehicles.

Professor Peter Ireland

Position:
Donald Schultz Professor of Turbomachinery
Facility:
University of Oxford
Areas of Expertise:
Hypersonic

Peter Ireland holds the Donald Schultz Chair in Turbomachinery and is Head of the Oxford Thermofluids Institute. He has dedicated his career to researching the technologies used to cool systems for aircraft propulsion and power generation and now leads a broad portfolio of research programmes ranging from turbine cooling to hypersonic flow. Between 2007 and 2011 he was the UK Corporate Specialist in Heat Transfer at Rolls-Royce where he held the senior heat transfer specialist role for projects involving turbines, fuel cells, nuclear power, fire modelling, manufacture, instrumentation, heat exchangers, power electronic cooling and combustion.