Nikolaos A. Gatsonis

Biography

Education: MA Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) 1986 ‐1991 Ph.D Physics of Fluids and Plasmas Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) 1991 M.S Aeronautics and Astronautics University of Michigan 1987 M.S Atmospheric Science Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece 1979 ‐1983 Nikolaos A. Gatsonis received an undergraduate degree in Physics at the Aristotelian University of Thessaloniki, Greece (1983), an M.S. in Atmospheric Science at the University of Michigan (1996), an M.S. (1987) and a Ph.D. (1991) in the Aeronautics and Astronautics department of MIT. From 1991 to 1993 he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Space Department of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. In 1994 he joined the Mechanical Engineering faculty at WPI, promoted to Associate Professor in 2000 and to Professor in 2005. He was appointed Director of the Aerospace Program in 2000 and Associate Department Head of Mechanical Engineering in 2007-2010. He is the founding Director of WPI’s BS, MS, and Ph.D. programs in Aerospace Engineering. Active in research throughout his career, he has been pursuing modeling, simulation and experimentation of multiscale liquid, gaseous and plasma flows. In addition, he has been developing plasma diagnostics with applications to spacecraft micro-propulsion. He participated in several space flight programs -including international ones- as well as ground experiments. He has published more than a hundred journal and conference proceedings papers. He has advised twenty one graduate Masters theses, eight Ph.D. dissertations, and fifty six undergraduate senior design theses (Major Qualifying Projects). He has supported four postdoctoral fellows, two research professors, and several visiting international scholars from Japan, Russia and Europe. Professor Gatsonis has taught at WPI numerous undergraduate and graduate courses and has been involved in K-12 outreach activities through NASA’s Space Grant Consortium.

Research Interest

Multi-weight Particle-in-cell and DSMC methods for chemically reacting microplasmas; Propulsive applications on attitude and orbital control of micro/nanosatellites; Computational methods for real-time control/estimation applications of UAVs; Multiscale, smooth dissipative particle dynamics (SDPD) methods for complex fluids at the mesoscopic scale.