Dr. Elaine S. Oran, Senior Scientist
for Reactive
Flow Physics at NRL's Laboratory for Computational
Physics and
Fluid Dynamics, was formally inducted into the Women
In
Technology International (WITI) Hall of Fame in late June.
She
was honored for her research which has "contributed
significantly to the advancement of the engineering profession
by pioneering a computational technology, which has unified
engineering,
scientific and mathematical disciplines into a
methodology for
solving complex reactive flow
problems."
WITI was established 13 years
ago and their Hall
of Fame was launched in 1996 to recognize
and honor the
outstanding contributions women make to the scientific
and
technological communities, which improve and advance our
society. In addition to Dr. Oran, this year's inductees included
Judy Estrin, CEO of Packet Design, and Dr. Caroline Kovac, General
Manager, IBM Life Sciences. Inductees from recent years include,
Duy-Loan Le, Janet Perna, Darlene Solomon, Dr. Bonnie Dunbar,
Dr. Irene Greif, Dr. Darleane C. Hoffman, Dr. Jennie Hwang, and
Dr. Shirley Ann Jackson. WITI provides women in technology with
education, conferences, on-line services, publications and a
worldwide network of resources.
Dr. Oran is known for
her pioneering applications of numerical
simulation for solving
problems in fluid dynamics and reacting
flows. She has made
pivotal contributions to a broad range of
problems in
combustion and propulsion, atmospheric physics, and
solar
physics and astrophysics. Her work has contributed to both
basic science and to advanced engineering applications. She has
over 300 publications to her credit, and these have been published
in a wide range of scientific journals, proceedings, and magazines.
With Dr. Jay P. Boris, she has coauthored the book Numerical
Simulation of Reactive Flow, whose second edition was published
by Cambridge University Press in 2001. Her current areas of research
include microfluids (the dynamics of flows in micro- and
nanodevices),
the physics of deflagrations and detonations, and
the physics
of astrophysical supernovae.
Dr. Oran is a Fellow of the AIAA,
a previous AIAA Vice President for Publications and a member
of
the AIAA Board of Directors. She is also a Fellow of the American
Physical Society and one of the founders and previous chairs
of
the Society's Division of Computational Physics. She is on
the
Board of Directors of the Combustion Institute, and is Vice
President of the Institute of the Dynamics of Energetic and Reactive
Systems. She is currently a Managing Editor of the journal Shock
Waves and an Associate Editor of the Journal of Computational
Physics.
In
1979, Dr. Oran received the
Arthur S. Fleming Award and in 1988
the WISE Award in Science,
given for achievement in science by
Women in Science and Engineering.
In 1999, she received the
Oppenheim Prize for "outstanding
contributions to the
theory of the dynamics of explosions and
reactive
systems." And in 2000, she received the Ya. B.
Zeldovich
Gold Medal, prepared by the Russian Academy of Sciences
for the
Combustion Institute, and given for "outstanding
contributions to the theory of combustion and detonations."
In 2001 she became an Honorary Professor of the University of
Wales. In 2002 she received the Dryden Lectureship in Research
Award, presented by the American Institute of Aeronautics and
Astronautics.
Dr. Oran received her A.B. degree in
physics and chemistry from
Bryn Mawr College in 1966. She
earned her M.Ph. degree in physics
in 1968 and her Ph.D. degree
in engineering and applied science
in 1972, both from Yale
University. She has been at NRL since
1972.
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