…Formerly Dean at the California Institute of Technology
*Famous for research on Hydrodynamics of Jellyfish propulsion
and the design of a vertical-axis wind farm adapted from schooling fish
*Received MacArthur Fellowship Award for his theoretical Engineering work
*Honored with Young Investigator Award from the Office of Naval Research, a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists * Named as one of Popular Science magazine’s “Brilliant 10” scientists in 2008 *Listed by Bloomberg Businessweek magazine among 2012 Technology Innovators, Awarded NSF research grants EIGHT times in five different fields * Established Caltech Field Laboratory for Optimized Wind Energy * Born to parents of Nigerian immigrants: Father, a Mechanical Engineer, Mother-Computer Scientist.
BY GEORGE ELIJAH OTUMU/FOREIGN BUREAU CHIEF, UNITED STATES
HE IS A GREAT NIGERIAN. JOHN OLUSEGUN DABIRI was born in
Toledo, Ohio to a Nigerian Immigrants, whose father has been a renowned
Mechanical Engineer and Mother, a famous Computer Scientist. At just 37
years, this Nigerian Genius has become a leading Biophysicist, still
reigning Professor of Aeronautics and Bioengineering at the Civil &
Environmental Engineering department of Stanford University in United
States.
This scientific genius was formerly Dean at the California
Institute of Technology, best known for his research of the
hydrodynamics of jellyfish propulsion and the design of a vertical-axis
wind farm adapted from schooling fish. He is the 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.
For his remarkable roles in science discovery, Dabiri in 2010
was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship for his theoretical engineering
work, where he established the Caltech Field Laboratory for Optimized
Wind Energy (FLOWE) in 2011, been a wind farm which investigates the
energy exchange in an array of vertical-axis wind turbines.
Dabiri’s honors include a ‘Young Investigator Award from the
Office of Naval Research’, ‘Presidential Early Career Award for
Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) and being named as one of Popular
Science magazine’s “Brilliant 10” scientists in 2008. Bloomberg
Businessweek magazine listed him among its 2012 Technology Innovators.
Early LIFE and Childhood:
Dabiri’s parents are Nigerian immigrants, who settled in Toledo,
Ohio, in 1975. Dabiri’s father was a Mechanical Engineer who taught
mathematics 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, the only
university he had applied to. 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 returned to Caltech for graduate school after
graduating Princeton with a BSE summa cum laude. He was a finalist for
both the Rhodes Scholarship and the Marshall Scholarship. He has been
awarded NSF research grants eight times in five different fields. He is
currently a highly regarded professor at Stanford University.
Research:
According to Dabiri’s profound research, Jellyfish tend to be
very efficient when they swim, which means that on a given amount of
energy they can go further than many other animals can. As one of the
simplest multicellular organisms, jellyfish (medusae) contract cells to
generate jet forces. By mathematically analyzing the fluid vortex rings
that form as a result of the contraction, Dabiri was able to model the
formation of optimal vortex rings.
Moreover, Dabiri and his colleagues experimentally confirmed
that such propulsion becomes “a more efficient means of locomotion as
animals grow larger”, because the relative impact of viscosity on
propulsion decreases with greater size.
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. Divers use a laser and optics system
that illuminates the flow field. The technique allows for refinement
and testing of previous models for vortex formation. The research has
“profound implications not only for understanding the evolution and
biophysics of locomotion in jellyfish and other aquatic animals, but
also for a host of distantly related questions and applications in fluid
dynamics, from blood flow in the human heart to the design of wind
power generators.”
The wind energy industry is scaling to larger and larger
blades, which harvest more energy. Dabiri believes that problems
associated with large turbines—design difficulties, building costs,
increasing areal needs (turbines are sometimes erected a mile apart to
ensure good wind flow), eyesore complaints and accidental bird/bat
fatalities—can be avoided through innovation.
His FLOWE center, with 24 close vertical axis turbines, is
his step towards more economical harvesting of wind energy. 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.
Accordingly, the 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. This has also led to the United
States Navy funding development of an underwater craft that propels on
these concepts, using up to 30% less energy than formerly.
Reverse engineering is Dabiri’s newest research focus. In
July 2012, a team composed of Caltech and Harvard students and
professors published a paper that outlined a tissue engineering method
for building a jellyfish out of rat heart muscle cells and a silicon
polymer. On a basic level, the function of a jellyfish – using a muscle
to pump a fluid – “is similar to that of a human heart, which makes the
animal a good biological system to analyze for use in tissue
engineering.” The next step this research will take is towards a
self-sustaining prototype – one that can gather food and activate
muscular contractions internally.
Teaching:
Dabiri was offered a tenured position at Caltech at the age of
29. He gave the 2010 Convocation Address at Caltech. In 2014, he was
appointed the undergraduate Dean at Caltech and he was elected as a
Fellow of the American Chemical Society. He was named Professor of the
Month at Caltech in February 2012. At the research institute, he has
taught several 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. In 2015 he became a
professor at Stanford University. He has some interest in motivating
kids considering STEM fields. As recounted in his NPR interview,
Dabiri reportedly said: “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
remembered 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.”
Dabiri loves God so passionately, as he is also involved in his church’s mentoring program, ‘The Faith Foundation.’
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