Christensen Recognized as AAAS Fellow

January 2018

Kenneth T. Christensen, Collegiate Professor of Fluid Mechanics and chair of the Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering in the College of Engineering at the University of Notre Dame, has been selected as a 2017 Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Christensen was honored for his contributions to the field of experimental fluid mechanics, specifically laser-based measurements of turbulence interactions with complex topography.

Each year, members of AAAS choose 396 Fellows for their distinguished efforts to advance science and its applications. Christensen’s expertise includes an emphasis on flows central to a range of energy, environmental, and geophysical applications. His work has included multi-phase flow within heterogeneous porous media, with application to geologic carbon sequestration. Within the Pore-scale Pressure Transmission theme of GSCO2, he directs a research group that pursues laboratory studies of CO₂ displacement of water in porous matrices replicated from those encountered in the Illinois Basin - Decatur Project. Because these experiments are conducted at reservoir-relevant conditions (pressure and temperature), they are the first to quantify the flow dynamics of CO₂ in heterogeneous rock for improved modeling and upscaling of CO₂ migration predictions. His group is presently studying how CO₂ migration dynamics are related to pore-pressure events that may be linked to induced seismicity

Christensen has also been honored as a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and as an Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. In addition, he serves as Editor-in-Chief of Measurement Science and Technology and on the Editorial Board of Experiments in Fluids.

New AAAS Fellows will be recognized for their contributions to science and technology at the Fellows Forum to be held on February 17, 2018, during the AAAS Annual Meeting in Austin, Texas. The full list of 2017 Fellows was published in the November 24 issue of Science.

Contact: Kenneth T. Christensen, [email protected]

Averaged velocity field of the prefront-passage of CO₂; contours reflect water velocity magnitude; gray regions represent solid grains; unless otherwise stated, only every other vector is shown in both the horizontal and vertical directions for clarity. Source: Li, Y., F. Kazemifar, G. Blois, and K. T. Christensen (2017), Micro-PIV measurements of multiphase flow of water and liquid CO₂ in 2-D heterogeneous porous micromodels, Water Resour. Res., 53, 6178–6196, doi:10.1002/2017WR020850.