Texas Tech University

NWI/WiSE cofounders reunion Feb2016

Some of the NWI/WiSE co-founders gather on campus.

(Photo above L-R) - Drs. John Schroeder (former NWI Director), Ernst Keisling, Richard Peterson, Kishor Mehta, Joseph Minor, James MacDonald, and former student Mr. Tim Marshall. (Photo credit: Liz Inskip-Paulk, NWI-TTU.)

The National Wind Institute (NWI) recently had the opportunity to welcome some of the original co-founders back to campus on Friday, February 12, 2016. Several current and former faculty members who had played a sentinel role in forming the NWI (formerly the Wind Science and Engineering Research Center/WiSE) were brought together to meet and to catch up with each other and with the innovative growth of their original project up to the current date.

Some of the co-founders included (in alphabetical order) Drs. Ernst Keisling (retired faculty), Richard Peterson (retired faculty), James MacDonald (retired faculty), Kishor Mehta (current faculty), and Joseph Minor. Each faculty member has made a significant contribution to the field of wind damage mitigation and were instrumental in establishing a wind research center of excellence at Texas Tech University.

The occasion was the invitation of Dr. Minor to speak about his particular legacy of wind research which was started (along with the others) after the 1970 Lubbock tornado, an EF-5 wind event that caused more than $25M in damages (in today's dollars) and led to 26 fatalities. This tornadic event was also one of the main catalysts that led to the foundational development of today's internationally-renowned National Wind Institute here at Texas Tech University.