Ken Powell
Arthur F. Thurnau Professor and DEI Faculty Liaison
Aerospace Engineering, UM

The other talks this semester will be based on research in Aerospace Sciences and Engineering. This talk is based on research in the Social Sciences - particularly Psychology, Sociology, Economics - and how it applies to education and careers in aerospace engineering.

For the past five years, I have been part of a group of Michigan professors who read this social science literature, and meet to discuss its implications on academic careers - teaching, research, service and hiring of faculty. We also give talks about why and how to improve diversity in faculty hiring to faculty throughout the university, department chairs and deans, and faculty at other universities.

In this talk, I will present some classical and recent social science research about issues that affect our ability to hire and retain a diverse and excellent faculty, particularly in STEM fields, and especially in aerospace engineering. Topics will include implicit bias, stereotype threat, accumulation of disadvantage, and some of the steps we are taking as a university to improve the composition of the faculty. I will also present data about the demographics of the aerospace field, and give you some strategies for being a part of the much-needed solution to Aerospace's diversity challenges.

About the speaker...

Professor Powell is a member and past director of the W. M. Keck Foundation Computational Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, and a co-founder and co-director of the Center for Space Environment Modeling and the the Center for Radiative Shock Hydrodynamics. At the undergraduate level, he teaches freshman computing, compressible flow, aerodynamics and aircraft design; at the graduate level, he teaches aerodynamics and computational fluid dynamics. His research interests include: algorithm development for fluid dynamics, aerodynamics and plasmadynamics; and the application of computational methods to problems in aerodynamics, aeroelasticity, fluid dynamics and space environment/space weather. His articles appear in Journal of Fluid Mechanics, Journal of Computational Physics, and Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics, among others. He is also a co-author of Multi-Media Fluid Mechanics. He has received a number of awards for his research, including a National Science Foundation Young Investigator Award, and a number of awards for his teaching, including the Arthur F. Thurnau Professorship. He is married to Susanne Maria Krummel; they have three children: Jasmine, Ryan and Nicole.