The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) has elected Texas Tech researcher Victor Maldonado as a 2027 Associate Fellow, an achievement that only 17% of members earn.
Maldonado, an associate professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering (MAE) at the Edward E. Whitacre Jr. College of Engineering, will be recognized at the AIAA SciTech conference in January 2027.
AIAA is the primary organization for aeronautics and aerospace in the United States, with nearly 30,000 members from 91 countries involved in its efforts to advance innovation in this industry.
Maldonado is being recognized for his contributions in experimental aerodynamics and flow control using optical based flow diagnostic techniques to advance bio-inspired surface technologies and unsteady aeroelastic rotor/wing performance.
“AIAA Associate Fellow status is an important milestone for a mid-career faculty member,” said Song-Charng Kong, chair of the Department of MAE. “Victor has contributed significantly to our new aerospace engineering program in curriculum design and research endeavors. The acknowledgment from AIAA further validates Victor’s invaluable contribution to the aerospace engineering community.”
Maldonado’s doctorate work at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute focused on applied fluid mechanics and aerodynamics of largely 2D airfoil flows. Since then, his work has shifted to more complex 3D flows, including entire aircraft geometries, and developing technologies to reduce drag and improve lift to drag ratios.
In 2018 he was awarded the NSF CAREER Award for his work on blade tip vortex breakdown and flow control to improve power efficiency and mitigate structural vibration. He was a faculty Summer Research Fellow at the NASA Glenn Research Center (2016) and the Naval Undersea Warfare Center (2022).
Maldonado joined the faculty at Texas Tech University in 2019 and directs the Flow Control and Aerodynamics Lab at the university, where he mentors doctoral and masters’ students in their post-graduate studies.
His work on bio-inspired micropillar coatings and synthetic jets for flow control, distributed ducted propulsion (“FanFoil”), and reconfigurable UAV platforms has contributed new design methodologies for next-generation aircraft, eVTOL systems, rotorcraft, and hybrid air-sea vehicles operating at subsonic speeds.
“The next frontier in flow control technology will be in hypersonic flight – where extreme heating and shock waves on the surface of a vehicle traveling over Mach 5 would certainly render conventional flow control techniques for subsonic flight ineffective. We are going to need novel high-temperature materials and actuators to bring the same aerodynamic benefits to hypersonic vehicles,” said Maldonado.
Maldonado has served as principal investigator for over $1.3 million in funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), NASA, and the Department of Defense (DoD) and has completed 24 peer-reviewed publications and 26 AIAA conference papers.
He currently serves on the AIAA fluid dynamics technical committee and the applied aerodynamics technical committee.
For a more in-depth look at Maldonado's bio-inspired micropillars research, take a look at his publications in Physics of Fluids and in Science Direct.