Interview with Dr. Ken Yu, University of Maryland (March 1, 2005)


CUIP Management Team: Where did you get your start, Ken?
Dr. Yu: I received a BS degree in Mechanical Engineering from UC Berkeley, worked at NASA-Ames Research Center, then returned to Berkeley for a PhD in ME, which I completed in 1989. My thesis work was on combustion instability in air-breathing engines. Upon graduation, I sent out a few resumes for an academic position to no avail, so I pursued a post-doc opportunity at Ecole Centrale Paris to work on combustion control. After one year in Paris, I went back to California and got a job at Naval Air Warfare Center in China Lake where I continued my basic research on propulsion-related problems, from supercritical fuel injection to supersonic combustion. Incidentally, there is no lake in China Lake -- only desert. After spending about ten years in the desert, my family needed a change of scenery. My wife, June, wanted to move to a more metropolitan area. So I started sending out my resumes again and got a few universities interested. I liked the University of Maryland the best for what it has to offer, and June liked the location near Washington DC the best since she once worked there as an OPM intern. In 1999, we moved to Maryland and I started my academic career focusing on active combustion control, combustion diagnostics, and high-speed propulsion as my main areas of research.

CUIP Management Team: What or who were your influences?
Dr. Yu: My advisor at Berkeley, John Daily, who has since moved to the University of Colorado, and Sébastien Candel at Ecole Centrale Paris. John is the one who pulled me into the combustion/propulsion field when I was trying to decide in graduate school whether to major in dynamics or fluid mechanics. Also, my first exposure of using laser diagnostics in combustion came from John Daily. Sébastien got me interested in the field of closed-loop active combustion control. Since then, suppressing combustion instability using a physics-based active control has been one of my research missions. As we better understand the processes that lead to combustion instability and learn to control them, it may be possible to tame combustion instability someday. This in turn will enable chemical rockets to meet future propulsion requirements. It is such a possibility of developing new enabling technology that inspires me and my students' everyday research.

CUIP Management Team: If you were not a professor, what would you be?
Dr. Yu: Maybe a poet or a painter. To me, the road not taken always tends to be very romantic. Deep down, however, I like this profession very much, and if I were given a choice, I would certainly travel this road again.

CUIP Management Team: Tell us two things you are most proud of.
Dr. Yu: I am proud of my role in educating future scientists and engineers, and I am equally proud of being a good dad to my two boys.

CUIP Management Team: Do you "Fear the Turtle?"
Dr. Yu: I love my turtles, but if you're a fan of the Blue Devils you definitely should "Fear the Turtle." Our basketball team has been somewhat inconsistent this year, but March is usually the month when everything comes together for the Terrapins. Go Terps!

CUIP Management Team: What kind of vehicle do you drive?
Dr. Yu: A Dodge minivan, green color. My first car, when I was a student, was a grey pick-up truck. Then I had a red sports car while I was single. This is my third car, and I think a minivan is a practical car considering the current stage of my life.

CUIP Management Team: Is there anything about you that CUIP Website frequenters might find particularly interesting?
Dr. Yu: My AIM screen name is "combusteer". Since I get a lot of junk email these days, I don't check my email as often as I should. On the other hand, my AIM is almost always idle but when a message comes in it beeps until I respond. My kids have found it easier to reach me through instant messaging. Eventually, I'd like to set up a cyber office hour with my students through instant messaging too.

CUIP Management Team: What is your favorite book?
Dr. Yu: I don't have a favorite book. Other than science books, I tend to read fiction and biographies. I find that each book has its own merit that draws me in until I finish reading it or abandon it in disappointment. So in that sense, whatever I'm reading presently would qualify closest to my favorite. Presently, I am examining “The Da Vinci Code” by Dan Brown as well as Kuo's “Principles of Combustion,” the second edition.