October 11, 2023 — Southwest Research Institute’s Dr. Nicholas Mueschke has been named an Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA).
AIAA Associate Fellows are recognized for overseeing important engineering or scientific work and outstanding contributions to their field. Associate Fellows must be recommended by at least three other associate fellows, be a senior member in good standing of the AIAA and have at least 12 years of professional experience. AIAA selects only one Associate Fellow for each 150 members each year.
The AIAA selected Mueschke for “significant contributions in developing leading-edge testing capabilities for hypersonics RDT&E efforts leveraging Southwest Research Institute’s ballistic facilities.”
“I’m honored to be recognized by AIAA and to be a member of this class of Associate Fellows. I’m fortunate to have the opportunity at SwRI to work on such challenging and rewarding problems that positively affect the aerospace community,” Mueschke said. “I’m thankful to SwRI and all of my coworkers for creating an amazing space for both conducting cutting-edge research and providing researchers like me with the freedom to pursue creative and non-traditional approaches to challenging aerospace problems.”
Mueschke is a program manager in SwRI’s Computational Mechanics Section, overseeing the Institute’s multidisciplinary hypersonic research, development and testing. His work is primarily focused on solving multiphysics problems that involve high-speed systems, fluid structure interaction, shock and blast loading, explosions and detonations, chemical reactions and multiphase flows. To successfully address such diverse technology sectors, he has employed a variety of computational and experimental techniques to investigate complex, nonlinear phenomena. His work supports a variety of computational and experimental projects spanning a diverse range of industries, including defense, aerospace, hypersonics, blast and ballistics, energy, oil and gas, manufacturing, biomedical, automotive and scientific instrument development.
“I have been privileged to know Dr. Mueschke for 15 years. He has done great work in several areas of fluid dynamics and hypersonics,” said Dr. James Walker, director of SwRI’s Engineering Dynamics Department. “He is a capable and dedicated engineer with a broad range of skills and a great interest and enthusiasm for pursuing important, impactful work.”
Mueschke holds four patents. He has published 9 articles in multiple leading peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Fluid Mechanics, Physics of Fluids, Experiments in Fluids, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, in addition to 12 articles in peer-reviewed conference proceedings. He has master’s and doctoral degrees in mechanical engineering from Texas A&M University. He joined AIAA in 2019 and serves as Vice Chairman on the Weapons Systems Effectiveness Technical Committee.
Mueschke and the AIAA Class of 2024 Associate Fellows will be honored at a recognition ceremony in conjunction with the AIAA SciTech Forum in Orlando, Florida on January 10, 2024.
For more information, visit Hypersonic Test Flight or contact Joanna Quintanilla, +1 210 522 2073, Communications Department, Southwest Research Institute, 6220 Culebra Road, San Antonio, TX 78238-5166.