Featured Researcher

Dr. Corin Segal is the principal investigator of the Institute for Future Space Transport and is an associate professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of Florida. And for April 2005, he is the Constellation University Institutes Project's (CUIP) Featured Researcher.

Interview with Dr. Corin Segal, University of Florida (early April 2005)

CUIP Management Team: Where did you get your start, Corin?
Dr. Segal: The year I graduated from high school, the Department of Aerospace Engineering was just formed at the Polytechnic Institute of Bucharest, Romania with eighty students in the freshmen class. It was a competitive admission but the temptation was too great to pass the chance. It turned out to be a good choice because it gave me satisfaction ever since, during my eleven years in the aeronautics industry, during my graduate studies at the University of Virginia and after I joined the University of Florida where I am now.

CUIP Management Team: What or who were your influences?
Dr. Segal: I always felt comfortable with mathematics and science, perhaps, because it involves a larger degree of individual thought and logical derivation than information accumulation that may dominate knowledge growth in other disciplines.

CUIP Management Team: If you were not a professor, what would you be?
Dr. Segal: History has always attracted me. It is striking how humans have changed the daily practice over the last fifty or sixty centuries but how little we have changed in our elementary drives, convictions, attitudes. There is much to learn from earlier experiences although rarely events replicate themselves. I could enjoy being an archeologist.

CUIP Management Team: Tell us two things you are most proud of.
Dr. Segal: The decision to marry my wife over thirty years ago; it has been a continuous source of joy ever since. My son is an educated person and on his way to becoming a well accomplished individual which gives me great satisfaction.

CUIP Management Team: Have you ever worn one of those foam Gator heads?
Dr. Segal: This, I figured, would be to no one's benefit, but it is hard to escape the warm feeling of camaraderie that engulfs this college town during a Gator event. Besides, it is easy to be a proud Gator because we are so good in so many ways and we constantly prove it!

CUIP Management Team: What kind of vehicle do you drive?
Dr. Segal: At this time I'm driving a Volkswagen. I've driven smaller and larger cars in the past. I don't have a particular preference. It's a matter of circumstance because different brands are attractive for various reasons at different times.

CUIP Management Team: Is there anything about you that CUIP Website frequenters might find particularly interesting?
Dr. Segal: I'm a regular individual but the CUIP frequenters will find that the Institute for Future Space Transport includes a remarkable group of researchers. There are thirty researchers in this group contributing to the education of close to sixty graduate students who will practice aerospace engineering for many years to come. This, along with the immediate research results, is an invaluable contribution to this country's leadership in science and technology. NASA is to be commended for the foresight it showed when it established these educational mechanisms.

CUIP Management Team: What is your favorite book?
Dr. Segal: Will Durant's “The Story of Civilization” is remarkable not only by its extent but, in particular, by the approach it takes presenting human history. It deemphasizes the sequence of events in favor of understanding how human relations, the geography, the development of art, tools and the other forms of expression have led to what surrounds us today.