Got an email this morning that this site would be archived due to a year of inactivity … whoops! So, let’s get down to business. Our last post covered the wonderful graduation ceremony for Aubrey and Arefe in Spring 2024. Since then, Arefe defended her dissertation – a truly beautiful study of density stratified mixing in zero mean shear isotropic turbulence (papers forthcoming!) – and officially graduated in August of 2024. Since then, she started a postdoc position with Dr. Krista Sutherland, and is now doing numerical modeling of planetary geophysics at UTIG. Huge congrats to Arefe!
The fall passed in a blur … highlights included a seminar visit to UPenn to meet with their spectacular Fluids researchers, followed by APS-DFD in Salt Lake City. Several of our JETlabbers went to the AGU Fall Meeting in December, and connected with some of their academic “cousins” and collaborators in DC, since they were advisor-less for the week. Congrats to Biman and Hiromu for jobs well done with their first official conference posters, connecting turbulence to volcanoes and glaciers through their elegant experiments.
One of my “personal” (but still professional) highlights this fall was in regard to a new international exchange program coming to UT’s Civil, Architectural & Environmental Engineering programs! As a bit of back story … when I was in college, planning to become a structural engineer (I loved bridges! Still do.), I had the fortune to be advised by Prof. Tony Dalrymple, who invited me to join his lab for experimental research of waves over mud – I was hooked. He then introduced me to Prof. Miguel Losada at CEAMA in Granada, and I was awarded a scholarship from Johns Hopkins to spend a summer in Spain working in his lab. Prof. Dalrymple always had a very international and dynamic lab group, with visiting scholars from other countries who would come to Hopkins for 3-6 month periods during their PhDs. So, when I was a prospective grad student, I informed my future-advisor that I would like to spend part of my PhD in Spain (note – this is NOT a normal request!). Todd was awesome and said yes, having many connections in Spain as well. So, I spent roughly a year of my PhD in Santander, Spain, at IH Cantabria, working in the lab of Dr. Iñigo Losada, Miguel’s brother! Todd was also running an undergraduate exchange program, the “Cornell-Cantabria” program, where students spend a year at each other’s institutions, taking their normal engineering courses, but living abroad with everything that entails. It’s been a hugely successful program since its inception in 2007. One of the very first Cantabria students to join the program was Maria Maza, who I met at Cornell back in 2008 (my first year of grad school). Maria and I were then PhD students at the same time, so when I was in Spain in 2012, she was working on her dissertation research and was an incredible host to me. Over the years we’d meet up at conferences and whatnot, our careers evolving in parallel. And so in the Fall of 2024, Maria sent one of the best emails I could ever imagine, inquiring whether UT’s CAEE department wanted to join the Cornell-Cantabria program, along with a handful of other select American universities. Along with support from UT’s office of International Engineering Programs, a very small team of us have been working to make this program a reality for UT. I was invited to Santander in December of 2024 to present two seminars and meet with the amazing faculty and international relations directors to see what we can make happen for our Longhorns in Spain. Fast-forwarding to spring, we had our first info sessions for students interested in spending their Spring 2026 semester in Santander, and we’ll have applications rolling in all summer. My research-abroad experiences in college and graduate school truly transformed my life – personal and professional – and I am so excited to see how this program will do the same as our UT students discover the magic of Cantabria, and we host Spanish students at UT in return. More to come!
A few more highlights … we celebrated a successful Masters degree completion by Alex Stephens this Spring, who gave an excellent seminar on her work on using surface PIV for stream gauging. Alex and I are presently spending 2 months this summer at ERDC in Vicksburg, Mississippi, working in a humongous wave flume so we can measure turbulence from breaking waves – the dream!!!! More details to come – as I type this, I am sitting inside of the flume, “supervising” installation of large aluminum rails that our instruments will (hopefully) be hanging off of by the end of the day.
And …. drumroll please …. perhaps the biggest update is that on February 20th, I went to a Gipsy Kings concert with my husband. And then at 8:30am on February 21st, my Dean and Chair came to my office in ECJ to congratulate me on being awarded tenure and being promoted to Associate Professor, official in August 2025. My husband and I celebrated with donuts, and then I went to grad student recruiting for the rest of the day, and got to be surrounded by my colleagues and the students who make this job so joyful. In the afternoon, my husband received notice that he was also awarded tenure, which we celebrated by checking in on our kitchen renovation progress, ha. The next day we went to the symphony premiere of a colleague and friend’s trumpet concerto, and we’ve spent the last few months exhaling all of the stress from waiting (and working!) to make this a reality. I am happy to say, the JETlab will be staying at UT Austin for the foreseeable future, where we’ve built a great lab, and where there are ideas stewing for continued lab updates and facility resurrections for years to come. It feels impossible to properly share my appreciation for the students, colleagues, friends, and family who have contributed in some way to this journey. February 21 was a day filled with gratitude for everyone who has offered support along the way, and who I look forward to continue to working alongside. So, super yay to tenure, and endless thanks to so many of y’all.
With that, stay tuned til our next update – always more to come!