John Dabiri

John Oluseun Dabiri is a Nigerian-American aeronautics engineer and the Centennial Chair Professor at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), with appointments in the Graduate Aerospace Laboratories (GALCIT) and Mechanical Engineering. His research focuses on unsteady fluid mechanics and flow physics, with particular emphasis on topics relevant to biology, energy, and the environment. He is known for his research on biological fluid dynamics in the ocean, of which examples are the hydrodynamics of jellyfish propulsion), and the design of a vertical-axis wind farm adapted from schooling fish.

Early life and education
Dabiri's parents are Nigerian immigrants, who settled in Toledo, Ohio, in 1975. Dabiri's father was a mechanical engineer who taught math at a community college. His mother, a computer scientist, raised three children and started a software development company. It was watching his father, who would occasionally do engineering work on the side, that encouraged Dabiri's love of engineering.

Educated at a small Baptist high school, where he graduated first in his class in 1997, Dabiri was accepted by Princeton. He was primarily interested in rockets and jets, and spent two summers doing research that included work on helicopter design. The summer after his junior year, he accepted a Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) in Aeronautics at Caltech, rejecting an internship offer from Ford at the urging of a professor. The summer project on the vortices created by a swimming jellyfish enticed him to the growing field of biomechanics.

Dabiri graduated summa cum laude with a B.S.E. in mechanical and aerospace engineering from Princeton University in 2001 after completing a senior thesis titled "An Investigation of Small-Scale Rotor Blade Aerodynamic Phenomena Using Particle Image Velocimetry and Computational Models" under the supervision of Professor Fred Dryer. Dabiri then returned to Caltech for graduate studies. He was a finalist for both the Rhodes Scholarship and the Marshall Scholarship.

Career
From 2005 to 2009 Dabiri was an assistant professor at Caltech in aeronautics and bioengineering. He was promoted to tenure at the age of 29. and as a full professor in 2010. In 2013-2014 he served as chair of the Faculty Board and was Dean of Undergraduate Students in 2014-2015.

In 2015, Dabiri moved to Standard as a professor in civil and environmental engineering and mechanical engineering. There he was also senior fellow in Stanford's Center for Turbulence Research and founding director of the Catalyst for Collaborative Solutions initiative.

In 2019 he returned to Caltech as Centennial Chair Professor in aeronautics and mechanical engineering.

Since 2021, he has been a member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST).

Dabiri serves or has served on the Board of Directors of NVIDIA Corporation, the Board of Trustees of the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and the Secretary of Energy Energy Advisory Board (SEAB), and as an advisor to X at Alphabet Inc. (formerly GoogleX). Additionally, he was Chair of the American Physical Society Division of Fluid Dynamics, as well as a member of the National Academies' Committee on Science, Technology, and Law. He serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Fluid Mechanics and the Journal of the Royal Society Interface; the U.S. National Committee for Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (USNCTAM); and the Defense Science Study Group.

Research
In his first tour at Caltech, Dabiri was director of the Biological Propulsion Laboratory, which examines fluid transport with applications in aquatic locomotion, fluid dynamic energy conversion, and cardiac flows, as well as applying theoretical methods in fluid dynamics and concepts of optimal vortex formation. He established the Caltech Field Laboratory for Optimized Wind Energy (FLOWE) in 2011, a wind farm which investigates the energy exchange in an array of vertical-axis wind turbines.

To further in situ digital particle image velocimetry measurements of propulsion in aquatic animals, Dabiri and his student K. Katija designed and patented a device which very accurately takes measurements that are computed into the kinetic energy due to swimming. The technique allowed for refinement and testing of previous models for vortex formation.

Noting that there is constructive interference in the hydrodynamic wakes of schooling fish, Dabiri suggested that extracting energy from flow vortices could aid more than locomotion. His models of the energy extraction mechanism are applicable to the design and evaluation of unsteady aero- and hydrodynamic energy conversion systems, like wind farms. Design of an array of vertical axis turbines led to about an order of magnitude increase in power output per area. Dabiri partnered with Windspire Energy for use of three of 24 turbines that stand approximately 30 feet tall and 4 feet wide. He started a company, Scalable Wind Solutions, to commercialize the software used to optimally place the wind turbines. Ongoing commercialization of vertical-axis wind turbines is being pursued by XFlow Energy, a company co-founded by a Ph.D. alumnus from his lab. Further research on wind farm design is being led by two additional Ph.D. alumni who became professors at MIT and the University of Pennsylvania, respectively. Research on jellyfish swimming led to the U.S. Navy funding development of an underwater craft that propels on these concepts, using up to 30% less energy than formerly.

After returning to Caltech, Dabiri’s research has focused on the hydrodynamics of electromechanically modified jellyfish, which he envisions for use in ocean exploration. Because jellyfish have no brain or pain receptors, Dabiri and colleagues have shown that they their swimming can be controlled without causing harm to the jellyfish. Moreover, both the speed and efficiency of swimming can be improved by robotic control. The Office of Naval Research is supporting planned deployments of the biohybrid jellyfish beginning in 2024, with the goal of reaching the deep ocean with swarms of the jellyfish acting as low-cost sensors.

An additional area of research in Dabiri’s lab is focused on the physics of turbulence transition, a longstanding challenge in the field of fluid mechanics. His recent work is exploring the role of the fluid-solid interface in theoretical predictions of turbulence transition. Additional research involves the development of new experimental techniques to measure the so-called “no-slip condition” of fluid flow at wall bounding the flow, which the recent theoretical work suggests might be relevant to the problem of turbulence transition.

Teaching
Dabiri was named Professor of the Month at Caltech in February 2012. He has taught classes including a graduate class on propulsion, a biomechanics course, a lab class on experimental methods in aeronautics and applied physics, and the introduction fluid mechanics course for which he was highly recommended by students.

His interest in motivating kids considering STEM fields was recounted in an NPR interview, Having two parents there who encouraged me and in some cases forced me to study and to really take academics seriously, was very important at an early stage. And then going through school, the role of my teachers was always so important. I remember my fourth grade teacher ... [she] made me believe that I was smart and so I took that and sort of owned that and tried to live up to the expectations that she had placed on me, even as a fourth grader. And so we really want to grab hold of the imagination of the first graders and the second graders at a very early stage, and get them excited about becoming scientists, as excited as they are about becoming a fire fighter or the next rap star. He has been also involved in his church's mentoring program, The Faith Foundation.

Honors and Awards
Early honors include a Young Investigator Award from the Office of Naval Research, a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), and being named as one of Popular Science magazine's "Brilliant 10" scientists in 2008.

In 2010, he was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship for his theoretical engineering work. Also in 2010, he gave the Convocation Address at Caltech.

Bloomberg Businessweek magazine listed him among its 2012 Technology Innovators.

Dabiri was awarded the 2020 Alan T. Waterman Award from NSF. In 2023 he was awarded the G. Evelyn Hutchinson Award for aquatic sciences.

Dabiri has been awarded NSF research grants multiple times in more than five different fields. . Retrieved 20 July 2024. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering.