the Informer

Courtesy of Unotes

Dr. Ivana Milanovic, the unviersity’s mechanical engineering department chair, recently received a grant from NASA, known as the NASA Fellowship Award.

The purpose of Milanovic‘s proposal was to understand the wake vortices in a jet in crossflow. Milanovic will be able to use higher-level technology that only NASA offers.

This cutting-edge research will aid in Milanovic’s investigation with wind tunnels and jets in crossflow. NASA has a very expensive facility with a large amount of tools that the NASA scientists use.

When this research is completed with NASA, Milanovic will bring it back to the university. She will then be able to give graduates projects based on her research.

The graduate students will be able to do the simulations on their own, which is a valuable skill to have because the technology that NASA provides will help graduate students learn concepts about active flow control strategies.

This will subsequently help them learn valuable skills suited for the work environment, and make them more appealing suitors for hiring compared to other students in the field.

With this research the graduates will learn more in-depth concepts,  involving turbo machinery and aeronautical exercises and the principles behind vortices.

Milanovic believes that the research the grant allows will be “an excellent way for students to learn how to do these simulations involving jet crossflow.”

Milanovic has been awarded grants previously from the Fellowship Grant. In 2002 she was able to do research with NASA on a project called “Yawed Circular Jets in Cross-Flow.”

In 2003 she was also involved in a  research project with NASA called “Synthetic Jets in Crossflow.” All together, Milanovic has done six research projects with NASA.

As a professor at the university, she has a lot of experience to offer the students.

This grant gives credibility to the school of engineering and the fact that employers will see the graduate students at a higher capacity because Milanovic gives the students so many opportunities to learn about a variety of subjects.

Not many schools have faculty that have worked alongside the professionals at NASA. Milanovic received these grants from NASA by writing a proposal in which she explained her purpose, a description of the actual experiments and references from credible sources.

NASA’s mission statement is, “To improve life here, to extend life there and to find life beyond.” This is one of the reason’s that Milanovic has been able to successfully receive grants from NASA, because her research is relevant and important to NASA’s vision. 

Milanovic was born in Yugoslavia, which was under a civil war in the early 1990s. She received her Bachelor of Science and her Master of Science from the University of Belgrade in Serbia and worked as a faculty member there as well.

After completing those degrees, she received an invitation from the Polytechnic University of NYU and received her Ph.D. in mechanical engineering. She was a lecturer in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Columbia University.

Milanovic was a finalist for the Connecticut Technology Council’s Women of Innovation Award in the Academic Innovation and Leadership category.

Since 2001 she has been a professor at the university. She has served as the department chair of the mechanical engineering department since 2006.

Milanovic will be carrying out her research this summer at the Turbo Machinery and Propulsion Systems Division at NASA Glenn Research Center.