Lance R. Collins
Biography
Professor Lance R. Collins is the Joseph Silbert Dean of Engineering at Cornell University. Prior to that he served as the S. C. Thomas Sze Director of the Sibley School of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering from 2005-2010, and he was Director of Graduate Studies for Aerospace Engineering 2003-2005. Collins joined Cornell in 2002, following 11 years as Assistant Professor, Associate Professor and Professor of Chemical Engineering at Pennsylvania State University. From 1999 until his departure, he also held a joint appointment in the Mechanical & Nuclear Engineering Department at Penn State, and in 1998 he was a visiting scientist at the Laboratoire de Combustion et Systémes Réactifs (a National Center for Scientific Research laboratory in Orleans, France) and at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Research Interests
Professor Collins' research combines simulation and theory to investigate a broad range of turbulent flow processes, including: (i) turbulent coagulation of aerosol particles (with applications to cloud processes and global climate modeling; (ii) experimental and numerical investigation of Lagrangian statistics in turbulent flows; (iii) mixing and chemical reaction in turbulent flames; (iv) turbulent breakup of microstructures (e.g., drops, polymers and red blood cells); (v) drag reduction due to polymer additives. A unifying theme is the importance of small-scale (micro-turbulence) transport to these phenomena. A second focus is on developing a new class of turbulence models that are capable of describing micro-turbulence processes.
Selected Publications
- . 2012. "Spatial clustering of polydisperse particles in turbulence: I. Comparing simulation with theory." New Journal of Physics 14: 105031.
- . 2012. "Spatial clustering of polydisperse inertial particles in turbulence: II. Comparing simulation with experiment." New Journal of Physics 14: 105031.
- . 2012. "Inertial particle acceleration statistics in turbulence: effects of filtering, biased sampling and flow topology." Physics of Fluids 24 (8): 083302.
- . 2012. "Direct numerical simulation of inertial particle entrainment in a shearless mixing layer." Journal of Fluid Mechanics 704: 301-332.
- . 2012. "Inertial particle relative velocity statistics in homogeneous isotropic turbulence." Journal of Fluid Mechanics 696: 45-66.
Selected Awards and Honors
- Member-at-Large (Division of Engineering & Physical Sciences (Committee of the National Academies)) 2011
- Chair (United States National Committee on Theoretical & Applied Mechanics (Committee of National Academies)) 2010
- Executive Committee (elected) (American Physical Society Division of Fluid Dynamics) 2008
- Fellow (American Physical Society) 2007
- Outstanding Faculty Service Award (Cornell Diversity Program in Engineering) 2006
Education
- BSE (Chemical Engineering), Princeton University, 1981
- MS (Chemical Engineering), University of Pennsylvania, 1983
- Ph D (Chemical Engineering), University of Pennsylvania, 1987
