‍Turbulence is regarded by many researchers as the main unsolved problem in classical physics. Due to its importance from both practical and fundamental viewpoints, it is a research area of great interest to engineers (mechanical, environmental, chemical, civil, etc.), applied mechanicians, physicists, mathematicians, oceanographers, atmospheric scientists, astrophysicists, etc.. This interdisciplinary flavor makes this an exciting and fruitful field for research. One of our main research goals is to achieve better understanding of how turbulent small-scale motion is related to the dynamics of large-scale motion, with the specific purpose of developing improved modeling tools such as subgrid-scale and wall models for Large-Eddy-Simulation (LES). LES has become a highly successful numerical approach to turbulent flow prediction, in which the large-scale vortices are directly simulated, while small-scale unresolved motions and processes near surfaces must be judiciously parametrized.

A major research effort centers on the structure of flow and turbulence in wind farms, activities mostly funded by the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy.  Also, we have developed a new approach to big data in the field of turbulence, wherein entire space-time turbulent fields from Direct Numerical Simulations are made available via Web-services and the notion of virtual sensors. The JHTDB is a public resource that has resulted from this effort, funded by the National Science Foundation. 

We continue to study fundamental aspects of small-scale turbulence via Lagrangian stochastic models and tools from dynamical systems theory.  And, Large Eddy Simulations of turbulent flow over various types of surfaces continues to motivate further developments in new wall models and applications, efforts supported by the Office of Naval Research and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research. A recent project funded by DARPA seeks to couple desktop laboratory experiments to subgrid model developments via Reinforcement Learning.