ProfessorJonathanMorrison

Professor Jonathan Morrison holds the chair of Experimental Fluid Mechanics in the Department of Aeronautics at Imperial College. He received his and PhD from the University of Durham and became a member of faculty at Imperial College in 1991.  His work focuses on fundamentals of turbulent flow and the instabilities that define the ‘route to chaos’ and turbulence, “one of the greatest unsolved problems in physics” (Feynman). Recent experiments have particular relevance to the generation of drag, energy loss and emissions in fluid-based systems. His approach is multidisciplinary, using a novel blend of smart materials, modern control theory and fluid mechanics to control fluid flow to improve the efficiency of fluid-based systems, especially for the reduction of drag (and therefore emissions) in the transport sector. He is Royal Society Industry Fellow, collaborating with QinetiQ, “Drag reduction for new airframe design".  With initial support of £13.3m from EPSRC and the Aerospace Technology Institute in 2014, he founded the UK National Wind Tunnel Facility (NWTF, ww.nwtf.ac.uk which comprises 22 strategically important wind tunnels distributed across 12 universities. With further UKRI funding of £23m announced in June 2023,  a further 12 new facilities will be constructed with an additional NWTF member. He has been Visiting Research Fellow at Princeton University (1999-2000; July-September 2001 & 2002) and is Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society. In 2014, he led an exhibit at the Royal Society Summer Exhibition, Smart Wing Design: Science Imitating Nature.